“Just do it!” Most everyone is familiar with the Nike slogan. Though their slogan is usually referring to different physical activities, it can refer to a lot of things in life. Homeschooling is definitely one of them. Not to say that everyone should run around saying just homeschool. That isn’t where I am going with this. What I am saying is when someone decides to homeschool, they should just do it. They need to jump in and start.
Don’t get frozen from fear. There are so many choices when it comes to homeschooling. Curriculum, learning styles, teaching styles, notebooking, lapbooking, testing, portfolios, etc. Too many times a homeschooler will freeze with fear. You will learn as you go. It’s okay. You will make mistakes, as does everyone. It’s part of being human. You may do what Valorie did, that’s okay too, as long as you learn from your mistakes. You may switch your style several times before you find your groove, but you know what? You will find it, you will be all right!
Don’t get paralyzed by perfectionism. A lot of people don’t want to start until the have everything perfectly planned out. They can’t start until they have planned, graphed, organized and arranged right down to the last day. Don’t do this to yourself. You are setting yourself up for what you will see as failure. Your days won’t go perfectly, your weeks won’t go perfectly and your year will not go perfectly. Life happens. No one and nothing is perfect, and if you keep putting it off, you will never get started.
Don’t get confined by curriculum. Curriculum is another reason homeschool is either put off, or pushed aside. “I want THIS curriculum.” It’s not a bad thing to want one curriculum in particular, but if it doesn’t fit into your budget at this point in time, then don’t put off homeschool because you don’t have it. “I WANTED this curriculum.” The other problem is when you absolutely had to have a particular curriculum, then you have it and realize it isn’t working for you. You are so frustrated and angry that you don’t want to even look at it, and since that’s what you had your heart set on, you don’t do anything else either. In both of these cases the situation is easily rectified. Work on something else. Do unit studies, do literature based, follow your child’s interests, do anything except nothing.
“Just do it”