 Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallach Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be a homeschool show and tell. The homeschool show and tell series is an open collaboration hosted by Abby from Reading and Rest and myself. Our goal with the homeschool show and tell series was really just to show there's not one right way to homeschool and we do that by bringing homeschoolers together from around the world to share their take on a specific topic each month. This month's topic is homeschool success. So there's going to be people sharing all kinds of different ways to homeschool successfully. There are tips for homeschooling successfully, what a successful day looks like for them. There's just going to be so many different awesome homeschool success stories in this month's playlist. So make sure you check it out in the description box. I am going to be sharing something that I think we could all use right now and it's how to homeschool successfully even when homeschooling feels difficult. I know you're like, what? Homeschooling is never difficult. Just kidding. So I'm going to let you in on a secret. Homeschool is not always fun. We should know that by now. Despite what your Instagram and your Facebook feeds and even YouTube showcases, there are difficult times in homeschooling, specifically at least for us January and February. It seems like we kind of hit that slump after the holidays. It gets really difficult. And so today I want to share my top five successful tips for how to get through that, how to handle it, how to homeschool well during the times that homeschooling feels hard and difficult when it's not all fun and games. Tip number one, remember your why. So maybe you need to be remembering why you started homeschooling in the first place or maybe you need to be remembering why you're homeschooling. Either way, this is when a mission or a vision statement comes in handy because sometimes reflecting back on why you're doing this or why this is important to you can really help get you through the slumps of homeschooling. So if you haven't taken the time to write a vision or a mission statement yet, this is a great time to do that. Sit down sometimes quiet, get a piece of paper and a pen and maybe just jot down why you're doing this, why it's important to you. So our mission statement for our homeschool is to instill a love of lifelong learning while prioritizing relationships and connections. So sometimes for us, homeschooling can be difficult because I've steered away from that. Maybe I've done some things or I've incorporated some things that no longer hold up to our mission statement. They're not instilling a love of lifelong learning. They're not prioritizing connections and relationship. So sometimes when homeschooling gets difficult or hard, me reflecting back on that can just remind me that this is why I'm doing it and maybe I need to ditch some of these things that are making homeschool more difficult or harder on us. Or sometimes it's just nice to remember why you're doing it. Either way, having it written out and reflecting upon it, focusing on why you started in the first place, why you're doing this is a great way to kind of get through the difficult times and focus on what can be successful and maybe not so difficult anymore. Tip number two is to take it slow. There is no rush. There's no gold medal for who finishes homeschooling the fastest. There's no such thing as your child being behind in homeschool. And if you need to see more on that, I have a video which I will link up here for you guys. But it's okay to slow down. It's okay to just feel the winter blues and go at a slower pace. It's okay to take a little longer, go the scenic route, stop your curriculum altogether if you need to and do something else. It's okay to go slower. It's okay to not finish. It's okay. So just slow down, take a break, do something a little bit different. Sometimes slowing down and taking off a little bit of that pressure is exactly what you need when homeschooling feels difficult because it makes you and your children both feel like there's a little less pressure and it just makes things not quite as difficult anymore. Tip number three, focus on interest. There is nothing that makes learning easier than when your kids are interested. So if you can take a break from that curriculum, like we talked about a minute ago, slow down and focus on their interest. Let's say you have a kid who's super into horses. Find a horse unit study or just watch some documentaries on horses, read some books on horses. It doesn't have to be elaborate. But when your kids are in a difficult season, when you're in a difficult season, when homeschooling just downright feels hard, if you can find a way to learn based on their interest, they're going to be more willing to learn and it's going to make teaching them a lot less difficult for you because you now have willing participants. So if you can find some way to incorporate something that interests them, it is a lot easier to homeschooling through those difficult and hard times. Tip number four, plan for fun. Fun and homeschooling is not always spontaneous. You can't always just be like, oh, we're going to have a fun day today and just whatever. Sometimes you have to plan for it. Sometimes homeschooling is difficult and hard and you need to go out of your way to plan for fun to kind of negate the hard of the difficultness of it. So physically write down in your planner, today is going to be a fun day. We're going to do art all day or we're going to play games or we're going to go on a field trip or we're going to whatever it is that your family finds fun, maybe it's going for a hike, maybe it's nature study, whatever it is that your family loves is the most fun to you. Plan it, pick a day and do nothing but that all day long. Sometimes a little bit of fun helps break up the monotony and helps make a difficult homeschool season not so difficult. And tip number five, which is the most important tip of all, give yourself grace. Homeschooling is not easy. This is sometimes a very difficult and hard gig. It's okay for it to be difficult or hard. It's okay for you to throw your hands up and say, I need a break. Give yourself grace. Be easy on yourself. Go easy on yourself. Take time off if you need to. Even if you're thinking to yourself, I can't take time off. We just took time off during the holidays. We have to get back in the groove of things. Sometimes you have to go backwards in order to go forwards. So if you need to take two steps back, take a break, re-gather yourself, re-plan things, get your kids on board in a different way, change up the resources, plan more time for fun, whatever it is you need, it's okay. It's okay to stop, to take a break. Give yourself grace. Everybody goes through a difficult homeschool season or a time when homeschooling is hard. So just know that you're not alone and that it's okay and give yourself grace to be okay with it being a difficult or a hard season. That is probably the most important tip of all of these, is to just give yourself grace. And then remember at the end of the day, as difficult and as hard as this homeschooling thing is, it is absolutely 100% worth it. So just keep going, mama.