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Flex Parent Helps

We asked our families for some of their best tips and tricks with their children. If you are struggling with any of these topics, please review their ideas below.

  • Take breaks and do something fun
  • Allow child to choose the location of school ex. the floor, outside
  • Remind the child that they can earn privileges for doing their work
  • Put a sticker on each day of lessons completed
  • Have a small celebration at the end of each quarter ex. getting ice cream
  • Let them do all the work on a page or lessons before checking if anything is incorrect
  • Activities or small prizes at the end of each day or week ex. trip to museum, park, family movie or a play date
  • Incentive charts for completing work and having a good attitude
  • Stick to a routine
  • Racing or timing them to complete work
  • Jar, sticker or ticket reward system where they earn tickets or fill the jar for positive attitudes, finished assignments. Once jar is full they earn something special. Or tickets can be used for a family "store"
  • Have special snacks during school time
  • Share copies of their magnificent work with relatives by mail or phone
  • Listen to instrumental music
  • Move to a different spot
  • Snack break
  • Have dedicated school time
  • Body doubling
  • No TV on or other distractions
  • Take breaks between subjects
  • Setting a timer, visual timers are especially helpful
  • Write all their tasks for the day on a white board so they can check it off and see what they have accomplished
  • Do something active before starting school ex. walk, yoga, game
  • Sit with your child and turn off your phone
  • Praise and recognition and positive attention
  • Leaving the room occasionally to do something briefly while they are working on an assignment
  • Encourage them to read the instructions
  • Allow them to complete as much as they can on their own, then help them finish after they have tried
  • Normalize not understanding and getting everything right
  • Make sure they know how to do the lesson then tell them you'll come back in a certain amount of time
  • Have a daily list of their work so they know what they need to do
  • Schedule the week out in advance
  • Prioritize school like you would a job or public school
  • Routine-wake up, get ready, eat breakfast, start school
  • Set alarms on alexa to remind kids it is time to start
  • Don't do free play before school, it creates more resistance to beginning school work
  • Start early! Afternoon school brings meltdowns and mushy brains
  • Don't have too long of a break between subjects
  • Homeschool Planet- an online scheduler
  • Sit down on Sundays and rip out all the worksheets from every book that needs to be done that week. Each subject is stapled together and put on a clipboard. My kids know to do one page from each stapled packet each day. If we have to run errands, everyone grabs their clipboard and a bags of pens/pencils.
  • Put a sticky note or book mark in the workbook or teacher book where you should be by the end of the month
  • Write pacing guidelines on the inside cover of the workbook so its handy
  • Bookmark each week of where you need to get to in order to stay on track
  • Still do some work on break weeks
  • Make a weekly schedule at the beginning of the year
  • Make 3 lists: curriculum you are behing on, curriculum you are on target on, curriculum you are ahead on. Start each day with what you are behind on
  • Make up days on the weekend if you skip a day
  • Use a planner
  • Start earlier in the year to build in a buffer
  • Mark the days of the week in each book that you're planning to do during the week so they know what to do each day
  • Pull out the pages from the workbook and put in folders for each week
  • Put all the materials on a bookshelf
  • Have a bin for all odds and ends
  • Keep it simple!
  • Have a designated space to store materials, curriculum etc is essential. You don't have to have a homeschool room, just a shelf or closet to store things.
  • Get desks from the DI
  • Have a separate bookshelf for library books
  • Color code books, teachers guides, notebooks and folders with colored electrical tape. It makes it easy to keep each subject material together and find what you're looking for.
  • Make sure there is a lot of light and flat surface
  • Each child has their own bin
  • Have items organized in totes and bins. A place for everything and everything in its place. Make the area feel clean and organized. Put the items where the kids can reach them for more independence. If you have space, do homeschool in a room that is free from distractions.
  • Store books in a dollar store magazine rack
  • Use a rolling cart for storage
  • Set up a cozy reading nook
  • Read fun books together!
  • Visit museums
  • Have a fun drink or snack while you do school
  • Fun worksheets or activities during the holidays
  • Meet with other groups of kids
  • Go noodle
  • Do school work at the park
  • Dance parties between subjects
  • Take walks
  • Do an "enrichment" activity each week ex. cooking/baking, science experiment, or craft.
  • Read with voices or act out stories with stuffed animals
  • Use colored dry erase markers and board for math
  • Do sidewalk chalk outside for math problems
  • If you get the math question right you get to shoot the basketball.
  • Incorporate fun songs
  • Do reading in a fort you build
  • Explore topics more in depth with online research
  • Go out in the yard for perimeter and area and use a tape measure
  • Use dry erase markers on the windows
  • Make each month different in some way. Have something to look forward to 100th day, Grinch Day, Gingerbread Day, Stem Day. The curriculum books will tend to become very routine and so find ways to change things up and keep things interesting. We do Would You Rathers everyday for one month. We track the weather and do a weather book for another month. I use the free things on Teachers Pay Teachers to download little non electronic games to play that reinforce the curriculum we are learning to add variation.
  • Have something for your other kids to work on whie you work with another child. Ex easy workbook, handwriting, typing
  • Have a child read to a younger one while you work with a different child
  • Have special toys for younger ones to play with while you work with older children
  • Have others do computer work while you work one on one with a child
  • School while the younger ones nap
  • Take all the kids to the park and work with one child at a time while the rest play
  • Create rotations and centers
  • Have them come up with the story and you be the scribe
  • Practice spelling words with a dry erase marker on the window
  • Use letter tiles to have them spell
  • Write letters to family or friends
  • Encourage them to write about what interests them and makes them feel excited
  • Use crosswords and word scrambles for spelling
  • Finger tracing
  • Use a spelling board
  • Practice words in a shoebox of cornmeal, or shaving cream on a pan
  • Consistency! Write every day
  • Use different tools like whiteboards, playdough, stickers, markers, crayons etc
  • Create comic books
  • Write in a highlighter and have them trace it
  • Practice spelling throughout the day at random times like in the car or outside