Top 5 Must-Haves for Mom This Home School Year
Coffee + Breakfast
Without breakfast, I’m a grouch. Grouchy wife and mom is not a good person to be around, and grouchy me should set the tone for the day for everyone in the house. When I miss breakfast, everyone else’s crazy builds up in me and I lash out. Making sure to start the day right helps me to maintain my personal sanity and balance through the day, no matter how crazy the day might become. And let’s face it, some days are just out of control.
*update for 2020: I’ll be honest; I don’t eat breakfast early most days anymore. When I first published this, I was a nursing mother and the regularity of a solid meal earlier in the day mattered more. Now I often wait until mid-morning, after a comforting cup of coffee. I’ve grown into the habit of having coffee while I read the daily Mass readings or some other spiritual reading. Thanks to Venerable Fulton Sheen for his affirmation of the practice. 😉
The average American is physically, biologically, psychologically and neurologically unable to do anything worthwhile before he has a cup of coffee. And that goes for prayer too. Even sisters in convents whose rules were written before electric percolators were developed would do well to update their procedures. Let them have coffee before meditation.
-Venerable Fulton Sheen, “The Priest is Not His Own”
Time for Spiritual and Physical Growth
Oh, time. There are too few hours in the day for all the things. Few are the days when each item on the to-do list are checked off, but when I make time for prayer a priority, I find that the most important things will be done, and the highest priority–prayer–is done first. It helps when I pray about the list. My favorite way to start the day is with Blessed Is She, because I have time with God’s Word and a short reflection written by and for women to help me dig deeper into the message.
I also make time for myself in other ways, like stealing away for 10 minutes to sew, or taking time while the boys are in the bath to soak my feet, or taking time to sit while I eat.
2020 thoughts: how life has changed in the 5 years since I first published this! Prayer is still my highest priority, though I often find my time for that squeezed into other pockets during the day. Staying physically fit has risen in my priorities, and the early morning is my best block of time to run or workout at home. The point is to make time for my personal growth, spiritually and physically, so that I’m strengthened for the work of my vocation.
A pre-planned syllabus
In 2015, I enrolled our homeschool kids (our girls) into the Mother of Divine Grace program. I’d used their syllabus loosely for years, tweaking a few things as we also did interest-led schooling and veered away from the syllabus for subjects like science and history. With a new baby on the way, our oldest entering 6th grade, and other schedules to keep, 2015 was a great year to enroll. Doing so kept me accountable to all the required turn-in assignments, kept our eldest accountable to a quality standard of work for turning in and review, and took all the pressure of scheduling and planning off my shoulders.
For the 2020-2021 school year, my decision isn’t final. I will be following a classical learning style, choosing materials from MODG, Kolbe, and/or Memoria Press.
Laughter
Because we’d all go insane without laughing, right?? I know better than to take myself too seriously, and with a houseful of kids, and the majority of them being boys (fart jokes abound), it’s a choice between laugh or cry. I choose to laugh.
A well-kept planner
I have 3 calendars going: one on the fridge, one in my purse, one for all my master plans which has space for daily appointments and to-dos. Without these, I’d be lost, late, and completely confused about what I should be doing. The fridge calendar helps all of us to see what is going on from day to day, the mini calendar in my purse helps me keep of track of appointments as they are made while we’re out, and the master planner holds it all, plus my daily to-dos and notes.
Love these and youre my hero. True story. 🙂 I really need a grand calendar to write all of our to-dos for the month andi want to force myself on the personal planner train! Oh and food! Always a must.
Calendars save me, as much as I hate to admit it!