In this post, I’m sharing how I survive a bad day of homeschooling without life spiralling into chaos. I’m giving my top tips to restart or write off the day, minus the guilt. If you have any go-to ideas that you can add to this list, please share in the comments below!
What is a Bad Day of Homeschooling?
You slept through your alarm because you were up super late with the baby and now your entire day is late. One of the kids is sick. You have to run an important (and unplanned!!) errand during school hours. For some reason, your student is just cranky and taking ten times as long to do anything. Nothing is going to plan. I’m sure every homeschool mom has experienced these multiple times. It’s a bad day. We all have to survive those few bad days of homeschooling. But how? What’s the best way to tackle these days?
Be Prepared for Bad Days
As organised as I am when it comes to homeschooling, work and life in general, I still have bad days. The number one key to successfully moving past them? Planning for them. Building a margin into my calendar for those days. If you find yourself trying to survive a bad day of homeschooling and your first thought is how one day will throw off your entire school year, then you’ve done something wrong. I already talked about how to plan your homeschool year and I mentioned that I don’t plan out every week in advance. Why? They never turn out exactly how I expect. So in order to be prepared for the bad days, be sure to have buffer time in your homeschool calendar so that you don’t have to stress about a day here or there not going to plan.
Another way I like to be prepared to survive a bad day of homeschooling is by noticing patterns of what triggers a bad day. For us, missing our morning hours of school due to a doctor’s appointment or some other necessary evil used to always mean a potentially “wasted day” of homeschooling. My kids do not have much attention span for anything bookish if we don’t start in the morning. If these appointments cannot be scheduled for another time, instead of wasting these days, I simply rearrange the week accordingly. For example, go heavier on the “fun stuff” on the day we only have a few hours in the late afternoon and lean into the book work the rest of the week.
The Mindset Shift for Surviving a Bad Day of Homeschooling
Once you realise that nobody has the power to waste your day – not a kid who doesn’t feel like school or a doctor’s office that keeps you waiting an absurdly long time – then the entire game changes. No, we cannot control other people or every situation. But you can decide how YOU use your time. You still get to decide how you react. If you’ve had to be out all morning, you still get to decide how you spend the time when you get home. Maybe the kids get to relax and just play together instead of trying to push through schoolwork in the late afternoon. There’s absolutely nothing bad about siblings having fun together. The day isn’t a waste unless you decide to waste it by chilling on the sofa and turning on the telly when you know you have things that need to be done.
How to Restart a Bad Day of Homeschooling
Sometimes, one of us just wakes up on the wrong side of the proverbial bed. School work is suddenly a chore for everyone involved. The clock is ticking and it feels like everyone’s wheels are just spinning. I have a few go-to activities up my sleeve for times like this…
- Snack Time – I don’t advocate snacking all day, but sometimes if meals aren’t balanced, your blood sugar can dip. A healthy snack can be the key to getting an energy boost and putting everyone in a better mood.
- Dance Break – I let the kids choose a few favourite songs to dance to in order to get out the wiggles or any frustration. (My kids’ favourite song to dance to these days is Hamsterdance.)
- Go Outside – Usually a solid hour in the fresh air, getting dirty puts the kids in a better mood. Just remember to set a timer so your little reset doesn’t derail the day.
- Mix Up School – Let the kids choose which subjects to do next. Or something like doing two days’ worth of English and skipping French for the day. I don’t do stuff like this all of the time, but sometimes it helps my daughter if she’s in the zone and especially enjoying one subject. I just make sure to balance things out by the end of the week.
- Decide on a Reward – Agree to do something that evening as a reward for pushing through the schoolwork, even if none of you felt like it. Movie night even if it’s not Friday? Pizza for dinner?
When to Write Off a Day (with No Guilt)
When a kid is sick or you end up having to be away from home (aka school) all day, there really isn’t much you can do. One time we had to all get up super early to drive my husband to the airport for a last-minute business trip. When we got home, just as the sun was coming up, we were all sleepy and felt like doing absolutely nothing. Instead of trying to push through and start school at 9 am, I let it go. The kids chilled. When they finally felt awake, they played. Was it a waste? No. As I was driving to the airport, I already knew the day would have to be a write off, so I decided to lean into it. While the kids played, once the coffee kicked in I got a lot of non-homeschooling work done. And no regrets.
Of course, you can still do things with your kids that you want to do that are not school, like
- Spending time on the couch reading together.
- Going for a picnic.
- Doing a fun “extra” project for school (art, history, science experiment?)
The mindset shift here is the most important thing though. Just because Plan A is a no-go does not mean you have lost complete control of the situation. If you’re intentional about how you spend your time and you’re organised enough to know what you can be working on whenever you have unexpected free time, then it’s easy to survive a bad day of homeschooling even if it’s a total write off and not feel guilty.
How about you, do you have a few key tricks for surviving the bad days of homeschooling?
Keep Reading About…
How to reset when life does go into chaos mode: Resetting as an Overwhelmed Homeschool Mom
Homeschool Planning: How to Plan a Homeschool Year and How to Plan a Homeschool Week
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