Scroll down to find 6 of my top productivity tips for homeschool teachers. These help me balance academics, extracurriculars and a job while also having a life.
The Busiest Job in the World (According to Me)
As a homeschool teacher, I have a 2nd grader balancing a heavy academic load (theology, maths, French, English, music, science and history) with multiple extracurriculars (dance, taekwondo and violin). We manage to get school done, including almost an hour of violin practice daily AND leave the house 7 days a week. I also have a 2-year-old who requires regular rotation of his Montessori activities and all the hands-on attention of a normal toddler.
As the stay-at-home parent, I do the laundry, the cleaning and most of the cooking, which – apart from the occasional emergency frozen pizza – is healthy and made from scratch.
As a professional tutor, I spend several hours a week marketing, writing lesson plans and teaching. I also manage to have a life – I read on average about 50 books a year, study German and consistently work towards several other personal goals.
I’m not special by any means. But I do think I have better time management skills than most people I tend to meet these days who are always complaining about how little time they have.
So here are 6 of my top productivity hacks for busy homeschool moms:
- Declutter and organize your space.
- Prioritize your health.
- Treat homeschooling like the job it is.
- Don’t try to multitask different roles.
- Time block your week.
- Keep a monthly and weekly wall calendar.
Declutter and Organize Your Space
Always rule #1 for productivity. I’m ruthless about getting rid of clothes, books, toys… anything that isn’t serving us and I can’t foresee us using anytime in the near future. When you’re a family of 4 going on 5 living in a 900-square-foot apartment, you kind of have to be. If you’re super busy and starting to feel like you’re drowning, this is where I would start for sure. For homeschool teachers, I highly recommend Notion for anything that doesn’t have to be a physical piece of paper. And for those, keep a binder. No clouds of paper clutter floating around over here!
Prioritize Your Health
This is so personal, I’m not even going to try to say anything about it except that, you won’t have energy to do anything if you don’t prioritze your health by eating healthy and exercising. Most of us know exactly what to do, we just make excuses for not making it a priority. As a busy homeschool mom, I know it’s tempting to think of it as “extra”, but if you think about the long-term and how you want to be energetic now and healthy until and even after all of your little ones are done with school, you must think about your health today. Make it a non-negotiable now and you’ll see how it positively effects everything else.
Homeschooling is a Job
It has a start time and an end time. I treat my Start School alarm like I have to be ready to leave the house and actually teach. When the 3 pm alarm goes off, we wrap up what we’re doing and it gets finished tomorrow. (If this keeps happening, I adjust the schedule accordingly.) This might sound rigid to some, but I find it incredibly liberating. School does not bleed into my entire day and my daughter knows exactly when she is done.
And as nice as it would be to hit the grocery store at 9 am on a Tuesday morning when it isn’t busy, I don’t do that. Or agree to playdates or anything else during those hours. They are blocked off for school. It’s how I know we will get everything done that we want. Especially since morning is peak focus time for my kids. An hour before noon is NOT equal to an hour after noon.
Don’t Multitask Different Roles
If it’s school time, I’m in teacher mode. I’m not trying to catch up on dishes or check work emails. During school hours – if I’m not actively helping my daughter with work or doing an activity with my son – I’ll use the time to look ahead in teacher guides, put books on hold on my library’s website, or prep another lesson or activity. There is usually always something to do.
On Fridays, as one subject is finished, I fill that subject in on next week’s schedule. I try to make Friday a light day so if we can get done before 3 pm, I can use the rest of that time block to prep activities (usually an art project or science experiment) and print any worksheets for next week. Then by 3 pm, school is officially done and the materials put away until Monday morning. And I’m free to focus on something else. The “school tab” is closed.
Time Block Your Week
On Sunday, I time block my week. I use Google calendar for this and I schedule everything. Including errands like groceries and getting gas. It’s not to make me a slave to a schedule. It’s so I know, before the week starts, that everything can and will get done. If you are the type of person who has multiple projects going on at once, this is the best way I have found to be able to “multitask”. I had to learn this the hard way as a student, but now I see the wisdom of it.
By making sure every project (or job or role) has a specific spot on your calendar, you can give your focus to one thing wholly at a time and not worry about other balls being dropped. Those balls have a scheduled time for when you will pick them back up again. In other words, it’s the magic behind the juggling act.
Keep a Monthly and Weekly Wall Calendar
I keep a wall calendar for the month and another detailed weekly calendar for my daughter. I use a simple whiteboard for the month and transfer whatever is in my iCalendar for the month onto the board (yes, I use BOTH Google calendar and iCalendar). And each Sunday night, I update the weekly calendar so my daughter knows exactly which activities she has which days. I started this routine before she could read, so it’s a visual calendar with pictures for her different activities. This stays pretty much the same throughout a semester, but it’s where I’ll add Post-Its if something is cancelled or there is a special event or activity. I wish my calendars were a bit more aesthetically pleasing, but they work for us right now. Everyone knows what’s going on and when. Mission accomplished.
Conclusion
I’m sure most of these are common sense and already plastered all over the internet, but maybe being reminded of one of these productivity hacks will help you in your homeschool life. Being a homeschool mother has honestly got to be one of the most demanding careers. A clean space, a healthy body and all the time management tips and tricks are essential to being able to do it all. And keep your sanity in the process. To get more productivity hacks for homeschool moms, I also put together a pdf with 7 more tips in addition to these 6. You can download that by clicking on the link below.
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