This simple question shows up constantly in our online homeschool community. New moms join our group or Blue Manor Academy and immediately wonder if their efforts measure up. When they ask, other moms rush in with reassurance, “Yes, you’re doing great. Yes, it’s enough.”

Although encouragement matters, so does honesty. The truth is, sometimes you are doing enough, sometimes you’re doing too much, and sometimes you’re not doing enough of the right things. This post explains all three.

Are You Doing Enough in Your Homeschool?

1. If “enough” means competing with public schools, rest easy.

I’ll tell you the comforting part about your homeschool first. If your goal is to do better than the public school system, then you’re already succeeding. Even doing nothing academically for a short season puts your child ahead in many ways because:

• Public schools teach distorted science and politicized history
• Abstract math that no one will use is emphasized, while essential math like budgeting, mortgages, and taxes are ignored
• They replace great literature with ideological “woke” texts
• Confuse students about basic biological reality
• Totally neglect wisdom, virtue, and character formation

You’re not missing out by avoiding that system. You’re protecting your children from it, and the data backs it up! Homeschoolers consistently outperform public school students across almost every measurable category.

So if your fear is, “Did I ruin my child by pulling them out?”, the answer is, absolutely not. You’ve rescued them.

2. The real danger for homeschool moms isn’t doing too little. It’s doing too much.

This is the part most parents don’t expect.

Although homeschool moms rarely under-educate their kids, they often overwater them. Just like a succulent doesn’t need daily soaking, your children don’t need every subject, every curriculum, every club, and every activity thrown at them in an attempt to “do enough.”

Here are the things many homeschool moms over-do:

• Teach every subject the public schools teach
• Add dozens of supplements “just in case”
• Sign up for too many clubs, sports, choirs, field trips, Scouts, co-ops, homesteading groups
• Try every spelling bee, Bible bowl, geography bee
• Join every church activity
• Try to win every competition

The result? Homeschools with exhausted moms, overwhelmed kids, and burnout for the entire family.

For example, one mom recently joined our group and said, “I’m exhausted.” When homeschooling becomes a burden instead of a blessing, something has gone wrong. This is not because the mission is too hard, but because the load is too heavy. Overwatering stunts growth. Overscheduling stunts learning.

Besides, kids who are constantly fed information lose the ability to process any of it. Just like a body that overeats becomes sluggish, sometimes you teach more by teaching less. Not less meaningfully, but with less noise so the meaningful things can take root.

If you need more clarity on this, make sure you check out the video below to learn more about whether you are doing enough in your homeschool!

Ask These Questions About Your Homeschool Instead

3. What does “doing enough” really mean?

Doing enough in your homeschool means focusing on the things that actually build greatness, not endless worksheets, busywork, or recreating public school at home.

Instead ask, “Is this feeding my child’s mind, body, and spirit or drowning them?”

Greatness requires:

• Sharp minds, not oversaturated ones
• Strong spirits, not stressed ones
• Disciplined bodies, not exhausted ones

Education is not about stuffing children with content! It’s about forming character, courage, clarity, and purpose. When you strip away the unnecessary, homeschooling becomes simple, peaceful, and powerful.

4. So…back to the question: Am I doing enough in my homeschool?

If “enough” means avoiding the public-school disaster? Yes, you’re doing more than enough.

If “enough” means checking every box and recreating a full schedule? You’re probably doing too much.

If “enough” means raising wise, disciplined, joyful, Christ-centered children prepared for greatness? That’s when the question changes.

It becomes:

• Am I focusing on the right things?
• Is this giving my children clarity or clutter?
• Will this help raise world-changers or overworked students?

Your children don’t need MORE, they need what is meaningful.

The Peaceful Way Forward in Your Homeschool

Once you remove the pressure to imitate public schools, and let go of the fear that “more = better,” you can finally build the kind of home education God designed for families!

Focused.
Purposeful.
Joyful.
Rooted in character, discipline, wisdom, and truth.

Finally, you don’t need to prove anything to the world. You just need to steward the children God gave you with confidence, clarity, and calm. That is more than enough.

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The post Are You Doing Enough as a Homeschool Parent? Ask These Questions Instead first appeared on True Aim.

5 Ways to Enjoy Homeschooling Your Kids

1. Plan Something Special

Plan something special this week. Your family could head out to the zoo to admire the elephants, drop by the children’s museum, or explore an amusement park.

You can keep things simple with popcorn, pop, and a stack of good movies. Everyone enjoys a movie marathon once in a while.

Try pick up supplies to cook a special dinner with your children. Try a different cuisine or a fancy dessert. Don’t worry if it turns out all right.

Or simply enjoy special time together with one of these fun staycation ideas!

2. Put Your Homeschool Plans Away

Don’t be afraid to toss the plans, curl up with hot chocolate, and read great books with your kids. There’s a lot to be said for reading days in the life of a homeschool family. You can tell funny stories, recite silly poems, and build tents in the living room.

The best way to combat the winter blues is to put your regular plans away and spend the day relaxing.

3. Meet with Friends

Take the opportunity to have a play date. Invite some friends over for a tea party, ask someone to join your movie marathon. Head to a local park for a few hours of sun, play, and fresh air.

You can invite a large crowd or just another family. Either way the children enjoy playing together while moms get a chance to chat and commiserate about homeschooling in February.

4. Homeschooling is a Lifestyle

So often we forget that homeschooling is a lifestyle. We get bogged down in the day to day grind of math, dishes, laundry, spelling, and grammar.

Kids fuss about chores. They fuss about cleaning their rooms. They fuss about schoolwork.

The best way to homeschool is to fold school into your life. Put free reading at bedtime. Kids get the privilege of staying up an extra hour if they’re reading a book in bed. Add discussions to dinner time. Listen to audio books in the the car.

Don’t get caught by thinking you need to homeschool from 9 am to 3 pm on a public school schedule. You don’t. Just remember that homeschooling is a lifestyle. Make it part of your daily routine.

5. Use Games

Games aren’t just fun to play, they’re also a wonderful way to homeschool. When you’re run down, the best option is to put your regular homeschool routine aside and play games.

Use Hangman and Scrabble to study spelling and vocabulary. Try math games like Uno, Monopoly, and Yatzee. Play history and science games.

In fact, have a family game day where you do nothing but play games all day. Invite friends over and throw an educational carnival party. You’ll enjoy homeschooling and time with friends and family. You’ll also make marvelous memories.

The biggest problem with homeschooling in February is you get bogged down by the daily grind. The best way to shake it is to drop your normal homeschool routine and do something exciting instead.

What are your favorite ways to liven up your homeschool in February?

The post 5 Ways to Enjoy Homeschooling Your Kids first appeared on True Aim.

Every homeschool year is unique, they all have different ups and down, celebrations and difficulties. There is no way to ensure that every homeschool year is perfect. We must learn to take each homeschool year as they come and do the best with what comes our way. Our children need us to stay strong throughout the homeschool year, it is our dedication and excitement for their education that greatly influences them to do well! If they see us consistently struggling to remain motivated and excited about homeschooling, then they will lose focus and become uninterested in learning. Even if the homeschool year has not gone well, we still need to ensure that we remain devoted and encourage our children to finish the year well. Our homeschool year may not end the way we intended it to, but we can still end the homeschool year well!

3 Tips to Finish a Difficult Homeschool Year Well

This year may not have gone as you planned, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t finish it well. You can make the best of the time that you have left, it’s not too late!

If you aren’t going to finish your textbooks before the end of the year, think about this…

Did you ever finish your textbooks before the end of your school year? Most people did not, public, private or homeschooled. Take a peek at next year’s homeschool books and you’ll find that the first 1/3 of the textbook is a review of what was covered in this year’s lessons! Don’t fret not finishing every single lesson in every single book. Put the books away and enjoy learning life skills for the rest of the year! I do encourage you to keep your kids working on Math and English in some way (fun apps, worksheets, games, etc.) throughout the summer because those are subjects that every child will need throughout their lives and you don’t want to have to relearn simple concepts at the beginning of the new school year. 

If every homeschool day has been a fight to get the lessons done, consider this…

Do your children learn differently than you are trying to teach them? My kids are very visual learners and are naturally drawn to different subjects, so we had to change our homeschooling method to fit their needs. Your kids may need a different type of homeschool curriculum than what you are using now, perhaps try using Unit Studies and let your child pick what they’d like to learn about! Maybe you need to reassess your homeschool schedule? Try starting at a later (or earlier) time or even consider year round homeschooling if a traditional school schedule isn’t working for your kids or your family.

If you’ve already hit your state’s requirements for homeschooling, maybe you should…

Take the summer off from homeschooling or focus on fun summer activities that just happen to count for homeschooling. There are a lot of summer activities that count for physical education; swimming, hiking, biking, team sports, etc. As a family you could go camping for a week and cover nature, geography, map skills, cooking and much more! Just because the calendar says that your homeschool year is not over doesn’t mean that you have to keep going, as long as you’ve fulfilled your state’s requirements what you do with the rest of your school year is up to you!

Whatever reason that your homeschool year has not gone as planned doesn’t mean that you can’t end the homeschool year well. Your attitude towards homeschooling, your children and their education is what will make the biggest difference in the end of your homeschool year! If you’re upset and angry, then your children will be too. Instead, look at this year as a lesson, take time to look the year over and find out what wasn’t working and make adjustments before the new year. Homeschooling can work for any family, we just have to realize that it won’t be picture perfect (after all, nothing is!) and that each year will have challenges unlike the year before. Just like in life, we have to make adjustments and do the best with what we’ve been given!

Finish your homeschool year well, make the most of the time you have left, and enjoy learning with your children! Even if that means putting the books away and spending the summer outside together side by side! There is so much more to education than what textbooks hold!

The post How to Finish a Difficult Homeschool Year Well first appeared on True Aim.

Deuteronomy 4:10 Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.

Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Joshua 24:15 Choose this day whom you will serve…but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Proverbs 8:10-11 Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.

Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 23:12 Apply your heart unto instruction, and your ears to the words of knowledge.

James 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God…and it shall be given him.

Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.

Hebrews 2:13 And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me.

Philippians 1:9-11 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ–to the glory and praise of God.

The post 10 Bible Verses for Your Homeschool first appeared on True Aim.

Memorable Homeschooling

Homeschooling is so much more than sitting around the table with open books.  Releasing the pressure of teaching often lets us see the big picture of raising children instead of scholars.  I found myself needing to be reminded of this last week.

In 2011, our son was diagnosed with a very rare and serious heart defect.  Our decision to homeschool in part was based on the fact that our life needed a lot of flexibility with different traveling and doctors appointments.

It was important to us to be able to travel as a family and we knew how precious every moment was together.  I was surprised that even with that perspective I would stress over a missed lesson.  But, it happens to all of us. We fail at times to see beyond the books and overlook the importance of those days that we don’t get to check off our lists.

Last Wednesday we traveled to Houston to have our son monitored, as he regularly does.  I got a front row seat to my five year old daughter sitting on the hospital bed with our son as they did his testing, speaking encouragement to her brother.  Words such as, “You can do it buddy. You are so brave.”  She waited with him for his results and cheered with him as we found out the good news that he is not in heart failure.

I watched as my children walked the halls of the largest freestanding children’s hospital in the world.  Hand in hand they marched with smiles and laughter.  They were confident in a place where uncertainty rains.  They were joyful in one of the most desperate places you can be.  As my kids giggled in the back of my car on the way home, I remember asking myself how I could have ever felt anything was more important than this.  Lord, please forgive my anxious heart.

At the bottom of my school planner I have a blank space labeled, “Weeks most memorable moments and Evidences of Grace”.  It’s so good to keep the perspective in the right place.  There may be weeks where you feel you can’t check off all your subjects or you feel like you barely touched on what you planned, but always take the time to look back on what you did get done.  This last week in Houston I didn’t get a chance to get to everything, but at the bottom of my planner I have this written:

Weeks Most Memerable Moments & Evidences of Grace (Provision):

” I watched my kids exhibit the joy of the Lord, the confidence of His promises, and the love of His sacrifice in a time where the world says they should be shackled with grief.  Medical explanations were unfounded once again as God continues to use our son to redefine what’s possible.  My kids watched another miracle today.  Thank you Jesus for this week”

The big picture of homeschooling doesn’t look at the sick days or the last minute days off.  It looks at the heart of children.  Are we merely raising children who are concerned with checking off boxes or are we choosing to raise intelligent children who are filled with faith and compassion for the world around them?

Have you had days that were hard to let go of lessons? What things have helped remind you of the big picture of homeschooling?

Keep the perspective and don’t forget to look for the evidences of His grace. They are everywhere!

For more homeschooling encouragement, like us on Facebook or follow us on Pinterest.

~Kathryn

The post Homeschooling with Perspective first appeared on True Aim.