10 Tips for Homeschooling During a Remodel
Home remodels are stressful. If you’ve ever experienced one then you know nothing is where it should be – life is in complete disarray. Homeschooling makes things even tougher. I know because we just went through our own little adventure the last few months with our home projects. School was completely disrupted, and we are still catching up from the ordeal. I can’t be the only one going through this craziness right now, so I thought I’d share some helpful tips for homeschooling during a remodel.
Adding in all the fuss of construction creates many obstacles that need to be addressed when schooling at home. And the addressing needs to be done prior to starting this major life change. Things we take for granted during school like access to tables, clean air, light, access to plug-ins, and calmness will be a thing of the past for a bit.
The house will be a demolition zone. Dust will be everywhere. Furniture will be moved out or shifted from one room to the next as things are updated. Often times, strangers are in and out of the home from dusk til dawn doing projects that can’t be DIY. Loud noises will overpower any volume of Mom’s voice. Exhaustion will set in fairly quick making the teacher – aka, Mom or Dad – cranky. Kids will be cranky too. Tempers will definitely be fragile. To put it bluntly, remodeling in the thick of homeschool is not for the fainthearted.
Home remodels are part of life, and just because you homeschool doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means you need to be flexible with what comes with it.
1. Unless you want to divide your attentions a hundred different ways, you must take a break from school. We took 2 weeks off to get started on a big project and then cut out days here and there when we needed it. We have extended our school year farther than I wanted…meaning we will have no breaks for summer other than a couple camping trips. Sad, I know. But it’s worth the results.
2. Lower your expectations. Seriously. Don’t expect a lot from anyone including yourself. You will just feel like a failure. Pizza will be the normal for a while. Kids will be distracted. Less of everything will get done.
3. Cut out all nonessentials. Math and Language Arts can get you by for a little while. It will not ruin your kids. This will shave so much time off of your school day and allow you to focus on bigger projects.
4. Pack up all that isn’t being used. There is no need for 20 different kinds of flash cards or next year’s curriculum to be exposed to the dirt of the building. Instead, provide one smaller container or basket for each child’s books that can be carried to and from rooms and into cars for transport. Packing all the clutter up also makes for easy remodeling with nothing to take up valuable space.
5. Shift to more independent learning. Unschooling was used in my home for some of the time that we didn’t do traditional book work. However, most of the time we used straight-forward workbooks because my children could easily take these other places and do them with minimal help.
6. Make the remodel a learning experience. What better way to learn about life than learning how to improve one’s home? This also provides for motor skills, design, building, woodworking, seeing people work as a team, etc.
7.Get out of the house. Study at the library, park, or a quiet coffee shop. A friend or family member’s home is always an option too. We lived at the in-laws for a week during the flooring part. We still got school done, and it was easy to initiate due to our baskets.
8. Utilize computer-based learning which doesn’t make a mess. During a remodel your house is already a mess. No need to add science projects, arts and crafts, or the like. That is just not realistic. Computer software will keep things neat and tidy and save you time.
9. Pre-plan your school to fit with your week of construction. If you know that the kitchen will be out of commission for the week, homeschooling at the kitchen table (like I do) is a no-go. You will have to figure out a new venue.
10. Take a deep breath. Things will get back to normal. It’s okay for this life change to take place. You are not ruining your kids by not giving them a “full” day of school or a huge amount of work.
Since my family home is now listed on the market, we have continued to keep all our non-essentials packed for the summer. We can easily stow our baskets away for tidy showing which is wonderful! As I’ve already said, homeschooling during a remodel is tough business. I hope these tips get your construction fun started off on the right track.
What have you done during a remodel to facilitate your homeschool flow?
