The summer before homeschool

Use the summer to learn, yourself. Read A Thomas Jefferson Education, read about the Phases of Learning, spend time looking at your life and thinking about what you can do to make this a useful change. Your children will be home a lot more. They will need meals and they will make messes. But they will also be present, to learn how to clean up after themselves, take care of their own belongings, and make meals. House cleaning and yardwork are things adults do: teach these skills. Getting enough rest and enough exercise, good food in appropriate amounts, setting a family schedule that works, these are things you can do now. Look at the arrangement of your home and the ages of your children. They will each need a place to read and write; for young children it's simplest to have them all with you at the dining table or a schoolroom table. For older children, separate desks, headphones for quiet concentration, separate rooms, may work better. However, you need to be able to come and go as needed; putting your teen in a room and never looking in on them is a bad plan. Hold interviews with each of your children. Express how much you love them, and listen. What do they want to learn? What do they want to work on? Where would they like to go for field trips? What are their interests, their strengths and weaknesses? Work with them to set up a plan. Then work the plan and in a month or two, renegotiate. Look at what worked and what didn't work. Be ready to change as needed, and hold onto the habits that work. You can do this.