April 03, 2023

Homeschooling Without the Overwhelm (with Tiffany Jefferson)

40 minutes

What a delight to chat with Tiffany Jefferson in today’s Homeschool Conversations episode. We hear how God took a young woman who never wanted to have children and made her a joyful homeschooling mother of ten! Tiffany has practical tips for other homeschool moms, and a unique perspective that is sure to encourage you regardless of your season of homeschooling life.

Show notes/Transcript: https://www.humilityanddoxology.com/tiffany-jefferson/

How to leave a podcast review: https://youtu.be/4DEv5HSEoHQ

FREE Homeschool Planning Guide: https://www.humilityanddoxology.com/homeschool-planning-guide

Books for homeschool moms: https://www.amazon.com/shop/humilityanddoxology/list/1UL4Q6GUWK37L?ref_=aip_sf_list_spv_ofs_mixed_d

FREE Year of Memory Work: https://www.humilityanddoxology.com/year-of-memory-work/

Follow Humility and Doxology Online:

Blog Facebook Instagram YouTube

Here an excerpt from my homeschooling chat with Tiffany:

"While I agree with the necessity of preparing our homes to house the "operations" if you will of educating our children, the most important thing we can prepare is our own hearts, in daily communion with the Lord through prayer and time in the scriptures. This enables us to face the challenges of parenting and teaching our children while bearing with them in their immaturity, and ours, while we are growing up into Christ.

With that perspective of truth, what that helps us to do is that when we are squeezed-- If we're putting scripture in, we're meditating on His word then when we're squeezed, it's the word that's going to come out. Now I'm not saying that we're going to do it perfectly and that's when we repent.

In light of that, here are some other practical things. Pray not only for your children but with your children. Find simple ways to incorporate worship and devotion of some sort into your school day. Time together with Christ at the center is really transformational in our days. Even if it doesn't seem like it right at the beginning, even if the body language of children, they're sulky and they're grumpy, do it anyway. Do it anyway.

Prepare as much as you can the day before. Gather all the necessary supplies for each day, your lesson planner or your books, and corral them into one spot, whether that's a basket of bookshelf, these fancy rolling carts that they have now, put everything together. It is a challenge to be-- You think you're ready to start and then you don't have this, and you don't have that. You're up and back and forth from wherever you're doing your lessons, and then you've lost your children's attention. I don't know about anybody else but that can be trying to herd cats after you've had your moment of going back and forth trying to find the things that you need.

Also, remember your why. Why are we doing this? I have found that remembering why I'm doing this, has helped to serve as an anchor for when I felt like I couldn't do it anymore. That why then serves as the baseline for what we do each day, what we do each week, what we're giving our time to.

Last thing, super practical, just write your lessons in pencil or erasable ink so that you can make changes. Cross things out, circle something you didn't get to today and move it to the next day or move it to next week, and carefully consider your season.

You're talking about littles and having a lot of littles and those little years, they're physically taxing. We have to lean into the fact that not every opportunity is an opportunity for now. The right thing at the wrong time quickly turns into the wrong thing."

...more