Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This means that I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
Let’s Have So Much Fun Homeschooling In The New Year 2021!
A lot of you on my email list are homeschool moms or teachers. I feel privileged to be speaking to you and learning from you since my education and homeschooling experience is probably a lot less than yours.
Thank You And A Gift Printable For You “I Am Determined To Have Fun In This New Year!”
Thank you for joining me on such a fun learning journey where every day is an adventure in the exciting land of education. Please allow me to share with you in this blog post my experience in my Happy Humble Homeschool.
Please also download at the end of this blog post your gift printable download containing important and powerful ideas and self-reflection questions, which you can use to motivate you to have lots of fun in your homeschool in the New Year!
Homeschooling Anxiety Knocked The Wind Out Of Me
Honestly, the thought of homeschooling has never crossed my mind because it is not a big thing in Singapore, the sunny little island I live on.
However, when schools in Singapore got shut down earlier this year, and I was forced to homeschool my very active preschool child, I was suddenly thrown into the strange world of online homeschooling, learning on Zoom and trying to get my monkey munchkin to sit down for some worksheet time.
Seriously, where do I even start? How do I get my active boy to sit down and do the worksheets and projects his teachers had assigned him via an online educational portal? I had all these questions, and there was no one around me to guide me on what to do.
Amidst stressing over the homeschool situation, I also had to make sure that we were well-stocked with food and even things like printer ink cartridges for printing out printables. I am the sort of person who likes and needs to be prepared for the unforeseen. Anyway, I was fretting so much, breathing so hard with anxiety, there were many points in time I just wanted to give up.
Online learning was not a new thing for me. I had experience running online businesses such as building websites for people and creating digital information products for sale. However, the potent combination of homeschooling and online learning knocked the wind out of me.
Since it was not in my nature to end a battle without a good fight, I figured that if there were no one around to guide me, I would guide myself by doing as much research on homeschooling and online learning as much as possible.
It was only after my research that I realized that homeschooling is a big thing overseas. Even though it’s not the mainstream mode of education, there are so many homeschooling families leading the homeschooling lifestyles that they desire.
I was so shocked at that time that one would voluntarily choose to homeschool their child, given the stress that comes along with it. However, after researching homeschooling and reading many homeschool stories online of happy homeschool families, I learned that I was doing homeschooling wrongly and that homeschooling need not be stressful.
I knew that I had to figure out a way to combine the bitter medicine of getting a child to learn with a sweet spoonful of sugar, aka Mary Poppins style. Here’s some advice from Mary Poppins:
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way
– lyrics from “Spoonful Of Sugar” by Mary Poppins
For those of you who have never heard the song “Spoonful Of Sugar” by Mary Poppins, click on the video below, please.
The video below is also the music video for “Spoonful Of Sugar.” However, it’s a kinetic typography animation, which summarises Mary Poppin’s life lesson in a fun learning style. Why not share it with your child to inspire them to find the fun in learning?
After watching the “Spoonful Of Sugar” video, I took it quite literally and initially bribed my child with sweets in exchange for some worksheet time. I am sure there is a better approach than bribing him with sweets, but I am glad that I went with what worked best at that time and have no regrets. At least, I got him to learn with me.
Since then, it has gotten a lot easier to sit down with him to learn and do some worksheets to improve his ABCs handwriting. Gradually, over the months, I have noticed that he has gotten more disciplined about learning and doing seatwork. And I am convinced that this is due to him cultivating a passion for learning and the habit of me spending a bit of time each day with him learning together with him.
I Am Going To Have So Much Fun In My Homeschool In 2021. Join Me Please!
I no longer homeschool full-time now, and my child is back in regular school. But due to my brief stint with homeschooling and seriously enjoying it after my initial fear of it, I am still running my humble little extracurricular homeschool where I learn and explore new educational fun things with my son daily. I do this after his regular school hours. Sometimes, homeschool can be as short as 10-15 minutes, but whatever the length of our homeschool, I always try my best to make it fun for us.
We may play the piano together or read and learn together. The most important thing about my humble homeschool is instilling in my son a burning passion for learning and to eventually become an independent learner and stay in awe of the immensity of the world of knowledge.
I hope my son derives as much joy as I in learning and acquiring new fun knowledge every day. For example, did you know that the hippopotamus poos and pees to mark its territory? When we read that in our book, my son was cackling with laughter, ha!
I now finally understand that it is so important to have fun when I am trying to get my young one to learn. May this newly acquired knowledge help me have more fun with my son in our Happy Humble Homeschool in 2021, where we learn with passion and stay humble and in awe of the pursuit of knowledge.
I wouldn’t have enjoyed homeschool so much if I hadn’t stumbled upon the fascinating homeschool community online. Thank you for joining me on such a fun learning journey where every day is an adventure in the exciting land of education.
Thank you for your time. I have a little gift for you here. It’s a printable set of self-reflection questions, which you can use to motivate you and your child to have lots of fun in your homeschool in the New Year! Please share this post with others who may find it useful. Thank you so much!
Ashley Yeo
I don't think these moms are necessarily more intelligent or have better lives than the unhappy ones but they exude the MOM POWER from within due to the way they react to things.
Motherhood And Positivity Can Go Hand In Hand
[…] Download your free gift and read the full article at: ashleyyeo.com […]