Successful Homeschooling Made Easy Course ~ Review

Are you thinking about homeschooling but find it overwhelming? Perhaps you've been homeschooling for a while but are struggling with burnout.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.

If so then Successful Homescooling Made Easy Course by Stephanie Walmsley from Successful Homeschooling Made Easy might be a great fit for you.

Successful Homeschooling Made Easy

Stephanie Walmsley is a Christian mother of 5 children and a veteran homeschooler. Stephanie started homeschooling her children in 1985 long before there was the huge wealth of homeschooling support resources that there is now.

Over time as the homeschooling movement grew Stephanie began to see how stressed out homeschoolers were becoming with information overload.

They were spending large amounts of money on curriculum and classes that might have been a good fit for friends but did not suit their family.

To help homeschoolers with this problem Stephanie created the Successful Homeschooling Made Easy Course.

Successful Homeschooling Made Easy is a 26-week online course that walks you step by step through setting up a homeschool plan for your family.

After joining each week you receive a lesson in PDF format. You can print these off or read them on your computer.

The very first lesson gets you started homeschooling in a very manageable way. This is the foundation of setting up a "fireproof" plan for your homeschool with a realistic 8-week schedule.

Lesson 1 starts off by asking you 7 important questions about your family's lifestyle and values.  These are things like what time your family gets up, what chores need to be done when, and what time of day does your family do better at academics, etc.

One suggestion in this lesson was starting a family literacy hour.

In this, for 1 hour a day, your family would gather together for activities in writing and reading.  The next thing she guides you to add to your schedule is a numeracy hour, this is covered in more detail in lesson 2.

The idea of starting off with just these two subjects is so that you can feel like you are being productive each day but not overburdened. Each day your children are getting practice in LA and math, extras will slowly be added in.

This program covers schedules, lesson plans, organization, and choosing a curriculum in a practical and non-overwhelming way.

How Did I Use It?

I've been homeschooling for 8 years now, since our oldest started kindergarten. So I was looking at the lessons with a perspective of if this would have been a help to me when I first started homeschooling.

Also if this would be something that I would recommend to a new homeschooling friend. I also hoped that I would pick up some helpful tips for myself!

I've had the chance to work through the first 9 weeks of Successful Homeschooling Made Easy so far. I have to say that I find Stephanie's writing style very warm, friendly, and easy to read.  She encourages you that you really CAN homeschool your child and enjoy doing it.

From the first lesson, Stephanie has you start working on what you believe is important to your homeschool and family. She provides 2 printable schedules you can use to get started.

One setup for morning people and others for us later risers. You start by putting together a realistic schedule for your family and a literacy hour where you gather with your children for reading and writing.

Now if you have young children don't be afraid of the hour for this! Stephanie doesn't expect you to have young children sit at the table and write for an hour!

For younger children the expectations are very realistic let them draw a picture and then YOU can write the captions. If they are old enough to copy then you can use this as copy work.

Doing this for a short time then use the remaining time to read stories together.

The next lesson focuses on math, Stephanie really helps you to not be afraid of teaching math.  She recommends some good resources for new homeschoolers and younger children for playing with math.

Other subjects are slowly added in one at a time as you work through the course. The value in building your schedule slowly is it gives your family time to adapt and form positive habits.

Jumping into a full schedule of subjects can be very overwhelming when you are new to homeschooling.

Because of the homeschooling styles, I'm drawn to many of the ideas I've seen covered so far we have done in the past. As life has gotten very busy for me we have dropped some of these group activities for more online independent work.

We really do miss our group subjects and Successful Homeschooling Made Easy has given me the motivation to start slowly working more group learning back into our schedule.

I think this would be a great program for a new homeschooling mom to work through. I could also see it being helpful for a mother who's been homeschooling for a while and is entering a new season in life.

Perhaps you want to make some big changes in your schedule and learning formats. I'm really looking forward to seeing what is in upcoming lessons.