Getting Over Back to School Blues

 It is always so hard to get back into the groove of things after being on Christmas break. Every year our family normally takes about 2 to 4 weeks off, for the holidays, during this time we do a lot of reading, Christmas crafts, relaxing, and just enjoying our family.  So you can imagine the looks on everyone's face and the mumbling and grumbling I hear when I tell them that we are going to start school again.  It's so pitiful!  So, over the four years that we've been homeschooling I've kind of put together some ways to alleviate the back-to-school blues. Because, let's be honest who wants to deal with a bunch of cranky pants?  I know I don't!  Hopefully, these things will help you in your homeschool as well.


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So you already know what's coming first, right?  Always, start out with prayer ask God for his direction for your homeschool, ask him to lead you, and talk to your husband as well to see what, if any, ideals he has for you. You'd be surprised at how much stress you will take off yourself by just opening up the Word and to your husband.  It also makes my husband feel good when we implement some of his ideas into our homeschool, even if it just means bedtime stories, where both daddy and kid fall asleep.

Kick your first day off with some fun games. Instead of doing a lot of book-work on the first day we love to play different games to get us pumped.  One of our favorites is scattergories. I love this game!  It kind of forces them to think outside of the box and do some critical thinking.  We roll a letter at the beginning of each round, choose a card list, and then we have to think of things that begin with that letter.  We set a timer for 1-2 minutes when the timer goes off we share our answers if no one else chose the same thing you get a point.  It is super fun!

Plan a field trip or nature walk your first week back. It doesn't have to be a huge field trip just something to get you guys out of the house and into a different learning environment. Nature walks are exciting! You can spend as long as you want admiring and discussing God's wonderful creation. You can also bring the discussion back inside for more research. For instance, if we see a bug that we aren't familiar with we can look it up and learn more about it.

Don't set your expectations too high. If you go into it with high expectations and things don't go as planned, you will just frustrate yourself and in return frustrate your kids. If you're anything like me at this point we can just wait to start next week because I'm done. Lol!  I like to start off with little to no expectations the less pressure the less stress the better our attitude.

Be excited!  I can not stress enough how important your attitude is to your children. If you are excited about school they will be excited about school.  They can tell when you're stressed, upset, or just not feeling it. I posted a video on my YouTube channel a while back sharing what my son told me about why he's excited about homeschool, after hearing this from him I have tried my best to keep a good attitude about schooling and if I'm not in the mood I will find us something else to do.

These are just a few things that help us get over the back to school blues in our home. What to you do to get back in the groove after a long winter's break?

Are you looking for more awesome homeschool moms??  Do you need some encouragement?  Well head over to Schoolhouse Review Crew weekly link up to find an amazing bunch of blogging homeschool moms!