Which Ball?
Home educators have many balls to juggle at once. So, which ball specifically am I talking about here? The academic ball! It can happen so easily, but it’s also easily fixed. So, don’t be discouraged. Get it sorted!
I’m sure you know what I mean. You turn around to check on your kids writing one day, and you suddenly realize their handwriting quality has dropped significantly. Why? You keep forgetting to do the copywork pages. Maybe they’ve taken a step backwards in maths, because you haven’t reviewed the fundamentals enough. Cue the internalized guilt trip. First, let’s zoom out a little here.
The Bigger Picture
Apart from home educating my own children, I work part-time as a reading and writing tutor for primary school students. The school teacher has informed the parents that their child is, or is at risk of, “falling behind.” These children come from public and private schools and end up with people like me trying to help them, despite spending six hours, five days a week in a classroom. Some are lazy, some are developmentally not ready for what’s being expected of them, and some really just need extra review and support at home from their busy, working parents. What’s the point of saying this here, you might be thinking.
The point is, as home educators, we really can be too hard on ourselves. There are kids all over Australia that are struggling academically in school, with parents who don’t have the time, the skills, or the money to support them. That is not something to be happy about, obviously. It’s simply to help you see that a qualified classroom teacher trying to teach 20+ students is also dropping the ball, a lot. But there’s a big difference between home educators and parents sending their kids to school.
As home educators, we can see when the balls are dropping and get onto it right away. We don’t have to wait until the mid year report card comes out saying little Johnny can’t read, spell or write at grade level. Even better, we know if our little Johnny isn’t even developmentally ready to attempt what the standardised tests say he should know now. And we get to forget about that stuff until he is ready. Love, love, love that about homeschooling.
When You Have Dropped the Ball as a Home Educator
But, what if it is clear that you have dropped the ball as a home educator? Your child is developmentally ready and eager to learn, but you’ve created gaps that are starting to show. For me this year, it’s spelling. To be fair, getting our youngest child to write at all for the early primary years was a struggle, so spelling did take a back seat. I let that gap widen too far though. She’s more than ready now.
What’s worse is she’s been asking me how to spell different words all year while she’s been writing. She’s even explicitly told me she likes to learn to spell using the ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ method. Did mum remember to print the lists for ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ after the mid-term break in term 1? Nuh. Term 2? Nope. Mum totally dropped the ball, but this term, term 3, I am all ready to go.
Check out all of my ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ sheets good to go from Monday. I’m even putting the lists in the Spelling Training website, so she can have fun playing games with them this term. I have a good feeling about spelling this term! Whatever area you’ve let slip recently, you can start to turn it around too!
What If You Feel Like You Can’t Fix It Yourself?
What if you’re sitting there thinking, well good for you, but my gaps are insurmountable? If your child needs to learn something you’re not confident in, or the gap seems impossible, what can you do? Don’t let it snowball out of control. Realise you need to call in help, or take time to learn so you can then teach it to your child. Whatever the struggle is, there are so many places to find help in 2025. Here are some ideas.
Places to Find Help
Online Ideas –
YouTube – a no-brainer of course, but it had to go on here. What can’t be learned or reviewed on YouTube these days?
Outschool classes – There are many affordable options for all kinds of subjects here. When we were living overseas and I was working, our eldest daughter did a writing and spelling course on here. It helped alot – https://outschool.com/
mathsonline.com.au – I am not ashamed to say that maths has never been my strong point. After persevering with textbooks, I have switched over to Mathsonline.com.au. This is a video-based maths platform for grades prep-12. They offer a free trial, and there is also a special half price subscription for home educators. Just be mindful that you’ll need your kids’ HEU homeschool registration numbers to activate this great deal.
Khan Academy has a free math course also – https://www.khanacademy.org/math
Offline Help –
- Do you go to a homeschool co-op? Ask if the troubling subject can be added to the co-op teaching schedule, and let another parent skilled in that area help you take care of it.
- Do you have a good homeschool friend or a family member who would be willing to help out? We don’t know unless we ask!
- If the two options above don’t work out and the cost of private tutoring is prohibitive, maybe ask your local Facebook homeschool group if any other parents would like to hire a tutor for a weekly group class. This might make it more affordable, and more fun!
If you have dropped the ball in any area of your homeschool, I hope you have been encouraged that you can quickly pick it back up. In saying that, home education is a wonderful opportunity to let our kids learn and thrive at their own pace. If you only feel like you’re failing because your kids aren’t ready to learn exactly what the Australian curriculum says they should, it’s definitely time to lay those fears aside.
God bless you, and have a wonderful start to term 3!!
