Transitioning to Homeschooling: First Day of School
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Welcome to homeschooling! You’ve made a brave decision to change your child’s educational path. Change can be hard and scary, but it is also exciting! Your home life now belongs completely to you!
The first step of transitioning you and your child from the institutional school is deschooling, which is the process of reframing your perspective, goals, and hopes to fit the needs of your child and your family. We are not going to dive into that process here, but you can check out our Deschooling Podcast Episode for more about that. Other first steps are developing your mission statement, finding curriculum, and creating your homeschool space. (For more about that, check out our $9 Homeschool Starter Pack Volume 1.) But we are not discussing those steps here.
Nope! We are here to help you with your homeschool first day of school. These tips, practical ideas, and sample schedule will take the guess work out of this big milestone - your first day. (For more fun first day of school activities, check out podcast episode 6, First Day of School.)
Tips
Mark the Day…Maybe: It doesn’t matter what part of the year you start homeschooling…you still need a new first day of school. Whether it is September, January, or even April. You need to mark the day that begins your new life as a homeschool family. Here’s the fun part - you have options:
A) You can tell your kids it’s their first day of homeschool life. You can let them in on this new profound change in their lives and mark it obviously with first day of homeschool signs, special treats, and dive into a structure or routine that you want to incorporate into formal homeschool days. In this plan, make it a special memory for you and your children to mark this first day of homeschool.
B) Or…You can keep it a secret. You can just secretly dive into being more intentional with their life learning, quietly slipping in your intentional intervention along the way. This would tend to fit more with the families pursuing an “unschooling” model or child-led educational model.
The idea is that you get to plan it how you want, depending on your mission, vision, and goals in homeschooling.
Pick a Good Day: Pick a day when there isn’t a lot going on so you can truly focus on what you want without a limited schedule. Pick a day of the week without afternoon sports or lessons, so you do not feel any stress because of lack of flexibility.
Set the Tone: No matter your approach to homeschooling, your first day of school does not need to be academically inclined, especially if your child is having a hard time with this major change in his life. It can just be a celebration of your child’s hopes and dreams! It can be enjoying your favorite place or being with your favorite people! Use this day to lay the foundational tone of your homeschooling life. This can be a hard transition for some children, so making it a party will raise their willingness and excitement while possibly lowering their anxiety (and yours too!)
Keep it Short: If you are teaching/offering academics on that first day, small chunks or shorter lessons is key. You do not want to overwhelm anyone on the first day.
Provide Balance: This might feel very new to your child who is used to traditional school or virtual schooling. So, start off with a few familiar activities and slowly add in the new activities. For example, if you already read-aloud to your child, do that. Then pair it with something new, whether it be a daily game, question of the day, a new math workbook, a grammar textbook, or a science experiment.
Offer Variety: It’s helpful if an academic first day of school has a various types of activities - like a reading book (or read-aloud), a game, a workbook, outside fun (like an obstacle course or treasure hunt), and an experiment. A brain warm-up dance might be a novel idea for your children too. (Enhance your child’s learning with these novelty ideas.)
Value Free Time: In between learning sessions, activities, or lessons, give free time to pursue interests and have a snack. Try not putting short limits on free time. Remember, the gift of homeschooling it increased free time and autonomy.
Give Autonomy: You can start the day by sharing the various lessons and activities you have planned. Then, let your child pick the order that you implement them. That will help fill your child’s “control” bucket - a daily necessity.
Practical Ideas
These ideas are a list of activities we have done together throughout the past 7 years on our first days of school. Pick a few and enjoy your new adventure!
Wear a favorite outfit or a new one. Even though you are homeschooling, you can still go school shopping for clothes, shoes, and school supplies for your child and for you too.
Take First Day of School pictures in your homeschool space (holding a sign). Get one of you too!
Wrap up a small gift of school supplies, an educational activity kit, or enriching toy your child would be excited about. (cute pencil bag, fun pen, lego kit, a puzzle, book from a favorite series, desk organizer, etc.).
Light a sweet smelling candle or turn on your oil diffuser to enrich the senses.
Play soft and relaxing music or throw on a Greg and Steve song to dance to.
Start your day with a fun table talk question using a book like this one and record your child’s answers.
Begin reading a book of the Bible together.
Give each child a calendar (or planner depending on age) and go over your plan for the week or month - planning fun activities and experiences that they are interested in together. This could be hikes, sports, museums, play dates, game nights, etc. The freedom of homeschooling has opened up a whole world to them!
Research fun courses together on Outschool.com, and sign up for one.
Warm up your brain with a Brain Dance Warm Up or an obstacle course
Study nature at a local park by collecting objects to discuss their textures, smells, and purpose. Close your eyes and try to guess the objects.
Go get that fish and fish tank your child has been asking for. Learn about the habitat and care first. We did this for our first day this year!
Read a picture book outside under a tree together.
After a short “school” day, surprise your child with a beach day, half day at an amusement park (if you have passes), or children’s museum visit.
Meet up with friends at gelato after lunch.
Visit your local library
Complete a page or two in an About Me activity book (check out ours and how we do it here!).
Pick a chapter book to read-aloud together and start the first chapter. (See why we think reading aloud to your child is a huge gift, no matter one’s age.)
Perform an experiment - whether it be Skittle Soup or Mentos Soda Rockets - these simple and easy experiments are a big bang for your buck.
Serve your child’s favorite dinner or dessert.
After dinner involve your spouse in family game.
Sample Day Schedule
The daily schedule is more of an order of activities. The amount of time spent for each activity as well as the activities chosen can be adjusted based upon your child’s needs. Wake up when you all want. Get dressed and eat breakfast when you all want to. Remind your child to practice his instrument/make bed/chores, etc. when he wakes up.
Give your child optional times to get started such as between 8-10 AM. For this example, we will go with 9 AM. Light your scented candle and turn on the music; time to party!
9:00 AM - Take pictures and open presents.
9:15 AM - Sit at the table, on the carpet, or on the couch and share what you are all excited about for the year. Then, ask the question of the day and discuss it. Read your Bible verse or motivational quote. Look at the calendar and come up with plans for the next week or month. Complete the first page from the About Me book. Pray for the school year or toast with Martinelli’s Apple Cider.
Break Time (This can be 5 minutes, an hour, or more. It depends on the activities you have planned for the day. For our example, we will make it 15 minutes.)
10:00 AM - Brain Dance Warm-Up video (12 minutes). Serve a fun snack while starting one of your academic subjects together. Spend about 20-30 minutes on the academic subject.
Free time (offer yourself to be available to play a game with your child, read to him, cuddle, etc. He can choose to spend this time how he wants.)
11:45 AM - Lunch and read-aloud while your child eats
12:15 PM - Perform an experiment and record your results.
Clean-up and free time
1:30/2:00 PM - Go to museum, library, beach, playground play date (or sports or lessons if necessary), and get some gelato on the way home. If your child is up for more stimulation, listen to your second language practice CD (Latin), audio book, or history (Story of the World) in the car if drive is longer than 15 minutes.
Free time
5:15 PM - Family dinner and game night!
6:30 PM - Free time for your child.
During this time, you can prepare for the next school day (or you can do this the next morning).
For Day 2, if the day’s schedule worked well for you and your child, then keep the routine. Make some slight changes by slowly adding more academics over time if you need to and regularly switching out the various activities with different ones. For example, for Day 2, you will prepare page 2 of the About Me book, switch out Brain Dance for a different novel activity, add a second academic subject for after lunch, and switch out the experiment for another activity.
7:30-8:00 PM - Bedtime. We allow our children freedom to peruse books in bed using flashlights or book light, often educational or lift-the-flap books like these ones (Grammar and Punctuation, Where’s the Ballerina, Guiness Book of Records, and Weird but True). We also mounted CD players to a wall in each bedroom for listening to stories at night. (My children love this one especially and can recite each story by heart.)
8:00-10:00 PM - That’s your me-time (in addition to all the free time throughout the day). Also, remember that if your children are a little older - you get to sleep in!
There you have it! Probably more than you needed to know, but hopefully our tips, practical ideas, and sample schedule take away any mental barriers you have for getting started on this wonderful adventure together!
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