Hey Mama Monday: Mama, Let’s Plan a Fresh Start in Our Homeschool

I really need a fresh start, which is why planning for the new school year brings great refreshment, and it comes right when I feel like I need to just scrap everything and start over! Anyone else feel that way?

Some of you plan years in advance what you will be studying and the curriculum you will use. Some plan during the summer for the next year. Some of you are very detail oriented, and some are not. Some plan each morning, and some of you wait until the end of the day and write down what really happened. God can use all these methods as they are yielded to Him. Seek Him FIRST, and God will give you wisdom for each child and strength to carry it through. What I’ve learned about planning:

• Plan to make pursuing God your family’s main purpose; don’t just add God to your own cleverly devised plans. Don’t ask Him to follow you and bless you; follow Him and bless Him.
• Our life is not our own to do with as we please but to do what would please God. In the same way, our children are not ours to do with as we please but to do what would please Him.
• After prayer, evaluate each child, do some research, make a simple plan, and present it to your spouse. Pray together, and then listen to what they have to say! They see things from a different perspective so be willing to adapt the plan.
• Plan to give God’s Word and prayer preeminence in your school day, and He will bless your efforts in the academics. He has a way of filling in gaps with knowledge and wisdom that we know nothing of.
• “Be confident of this very thing: that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
• “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being . . .” (Acts 17:28).
• “I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me” (Psalm 57:2).

Take heart in this: if you are seeking God, His wisdom, and His ways for each child, He will be faithful to lead you–today and in the new school year. We gain strength and confidence by staying close to the Lord’s side, doing His will in His strength for His children.

Deborah Wuehler is the Senior Editor and Director of Production here at The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine. She would say she is a very ordinary homeschool mom–with one exception: she has an extra-ordinary God Who provides all she needs for life and homeschooling. She has eight children aged 11 to 29. Deborah’s mission is this: to point other homeschoolers to the Lord in all they do, think, and feel—and to confirm that they, too, can find everything they need for life, godliness–and homeschooling–in their knowledge of Him (2 Peter 1:3, 4).