Spring Cleaning

I love the change of seasons. It feels like a new beginning, a time to refresh and recharge. Spring is an exceptionally good time for this as we come out of the cold, wet, snowy winter feeling, into a world re-emerging in new growth and beauty. And it got me wondering, do you Spring clean your homeschool and your homeschooling?

I love to Spring clean all things homeschooling. In our home our daily rhythms are driven by the needs of each season as much as our kids’ ages and stages as well as our current interests.

I start with our daily rhythm, giving it a look over and a refresh. I sit down and write out what our major goals are each day. We book in three meals during our day, followed by blocking out times for our morning reading, math, and language arts. Our days also include a long walk with our family dog and, with the coming spring, the yard chores. We have trees to prune, gardens to get ready and seedlings to start.

Once I’ve got a good idea of what our days will look like and what is realistic to achieve in a day, I look at what themes I want to add to our weeks and months. We have a display board where we put up seasonal items: poetry, the name of the season, artwork relating to the current season, and so on. I refresh our board before the start of the new season is upon us, so that the kids get geared up for the change and we can count down to it.

And finally I look over our homeschooling, physically and ideally. This is a great time to reflect on what our goals are for each of our children and for the school year. Have we met those goals? Are they still realistic or what we want to achieve? Have any other goals or focuses emerged that we need to be mindful of? How is our curriculum working? We go through our resources, replace those that have been exhausted, and bring out new items to explore.

I’m forever looking for ways to keep our home clean and organized with all the books and resources that we collect. Trying new systems and ideas helps to achieve this goal and also helps me to revamp what we need handy and what we want to focus on learning for the next few months.

So go ahead – spring clean your homeschool and your homeschooling – and make room for new life and beauty in your daily learning.