Episode 18 Spring Reset for Homeschool Moms

Spring has a way of making us all crave a fresh start, especially in homeschool. In this episode, we’re talking about what it looks like to reset your rhythm without overcomplicating everything. If winter felt heavy, routines got off track, or you’re just feeling the need for a little breathing room, this conversation is for you. We’re sharing simple ways to lighten the load, let go of what isn’t working, and step into spring with more peace and less pressure.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to homeschooling and life unfiltered with Court and Jess, where real talk meets real life. Court and Jess are two friends, fellow moms, and business partners who live in different time zones and juggle homeschooling alongside motherhood and entrepreneurship. Jess is a mom of eight and Court is a mom of seven, and together they're raising 15 kids and navigating the wild, wonderful world of homeschooling, each in completely different ways. Every week we invite you to pull up a chair for honest conversations, practical tips, and uplifting encouragement. You'll hear from moms across the country who are homeschooling in a way that works best for their families. Whether you're a veteran homeschool mom just getting started or somewhere in between, this is your space to feel seen, supported, and inspired. Because no matter how different our past may look, we are all in this together. Hey everybody, welcome to homeschooling and life on filter with Court and Jess. We are starting an eight-week spring series right now, and this is our first one, and it's all about the spring reset. Okay, so I don't know about you, but we get spring fever, you know, when it starts to warm up. I remember as a school teacher, it would start to warm up outside, and the kids would just go bananas. And it my kids still do it, like even at home. But I feel like we skipped spring in Arizona, you guys. It's supposed to be a hundred degrees today. We went from cold winter to just poof, summer's here, we're gonna swim. But it's still it's still that antsy, like now, honestly. I feel like my kids have summer fever because they're just like when's school over, but it's you know, it's all the same thing. Yeah, experience for you in Minnesota. Um, but let's talk about why does spring feel like just kind of a such a natural reset point? Like we all kind of just you know a spring cleaning and you want to do all the change everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yeah, well, it's funny that you said the spring cleaning because I was just gonna say that for me, I don't really get so my homeschool like reset time is usually in January. So it's after Christmas break, and that's when I naturally feel like, okay, I need to assess what's what's working, what's not, what do we need to change up? For me, it's never really spring. So that's so interesting. Um, but everything else in my life is spring reset for me. So I relook at even like my work calendar. I'm re-looking at the work calendar now. The time has changed. And do those meeting times still work? Should they still work for the teams? Do we need to readjust them? Do they work still for me and for the kids? Um, does our morning routine still work for us as far as not school, but just like our maybe a block of school time, but like just the the rhythm that warm a rhythm, re-reevaluating rhythms. But it's also for me a major reset as far as like spring cleaning. Like this is a big thing, like opening windows where we can. Um, we've been doing a huge like rearranging process at my house right now. So moving bedrooms and deep cleaning everything. And so um that is always that's always um the case for me in spring. And I think it's because we want so badly to get outside, and we can, um, but it's not like summer yet. It's not spring yet for us, um, as far as the what you'd think about for spring weather. Although we are gonna have like an almost 80-degree day on Saturday, but it's still in the 30s and 40s today. Um, but I think so. It's like all this pent-up energy. So I feel like, oh, we can get all these household projects done too, because it's not just cleaning, it's also household projects, like what projects? And then we're also so we're gonna be starting our um like our seeds indoor for our garden. So it's like planning our garden. So it's doing a lot of um, we also are planning all of our like our summer travel and like the things we want to, not just travel, travel, but like the the fun days we want to participate in. Like there's a great ministry in Minnesota. Um it is called as I can think of is their names, not the name of the ministry. Um I'll think about it. Rory Groves is the is the name, but they have a great like family, um like having your own family, like sustainable economy, and they do all kinds of really cool stuff. So we go to like a uh their farm and do this country fair every year. So we're re-evaluating like what what are we evaluating which things do we want to participate in this summer and which ones are we gonna bypass? We are attending that one this year, but uh we love that one. Um, so yeah, that's for me the reset is actually more on the family dynamic level and less about like specifically homeschooling.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Okay, so you said you do like a homeschool reset, like in January. So do you do it like on the calendar and you don't just like have a see a season where you're just because sometimes life is crazy and the kids are not paying attention to math or they're just really boycotting this, or I'm antsy and I don't want to do this. So you don't naturally do it, you do it on a calendar, which doesn't surprise me that you do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

It's naturally, but it's always the same. It's naturally, but it's always in January. And it's because I just am so sick of winter by then, I think, and like we're just feeling really stagnant in our homeschool routine. We're halfway through the year, and I'm starting to feel that little panic of like, have we done enough for the school year? Right. And so for me, if the reset was in spring, the way my mentality is, it'd be too late for that panic because it's like, well, now we don't have enough time, we're gonna have to work through the whole summer.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Oh, okay. So you are doing a spring reset, but you literally are just kind of doing it before everybody else is normally doing it. Oh, okay, that totally makes sense. Yeah. Okay. No, mine hits like spring break. This is technically spring break next week. When this airs, it will be the first week of spring, right? Because spring is two days away. Um, and it's so funny. I got to spring break, and so we went to Disney then a couple weeks ago, and so that was our spring break. We missed three days of school, and I was like, hey, this is spring break. And they're like, well, that was only three days. We get two more. So I was like, okay, fine. So this is the natural spring break of like everybody around us. And so, and my daughter that's in high school that goes to like the culinary school, she's home. So I was like, fine, you can pick two days this week and you get to sleep in and like do your spring break thing, right? And so that was Monday and today. But I'm just naturally like, I'm tired of it. Like I'm burnt out, they're burnt out. Like everybody's just kind of family school's been a little like, well, we have to do like what do I want to do? What do we have? And I just start so anyway. So I just I always get this way. Like every spring, I'm just kind of like, oh, I'm just done. Like, it's the time to be done to school. And my son is like, when can we be done with school? When are we done? When's our last day of school? And we don't really have a last day of school, we just kind of school till we're done. You know what I mean? Like we just like we take a lot of breaks when we can, and that means you keep going to school till it's done, really. But I don't know, there's something in the air, I swear. But it's funny that you said the thing about opening the windows because I just had this conversation with my mom this morning. We just closed all of our windows and I've had the air conditioning on like for a couple weeks because it's too hot outside now. So it's so funny. I never really until we started, you know, talking more in like I never realized how different it was in other parts of the country because I've just always lived in Arizona. So you don't know any different, I mean, other than California, right? But it's not much different than here. So it's just super interesting to me.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

So I was just reading this thing, and I'm gonna try to look it up while we um look. Uh let's see, there's like this. I'm in this group of women, and it's it's um, oh yeah, so it's so anyways. One of the my favorite threads, and we should actually do it, is what advice, what's the best you've advice you've gotten from your grandmother? And so it's just like really old school, like really good mom advice that's tried and true through the generations. And there's this German term for oh goodness, I cannot pronounce that, for opening the windows. Um let's see, roughly translate to ventilate or airing out and involves opening the windows in your home once or twice a day, regardless of the temperature out to eliminate stale air. Uh L-U-F-T-E-N.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Sounds expensive in Arizona.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yeah, for Minnesota totally different. But um when I spend, you know, I've we've had some illness in the house, and so we try to keep some windows open um to help move that air through. But um yeah, I'm always trying to get the windows open when I can. So it's anyways, it's fine that you mentioned that.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yeah, well, I mean, I literally leave my windows open all winter. All winter. Like it's cold, but I like it to be cold. Like it's okay. I can we just leave our windows open. Yeah. I mean, there's a few days that we can close them because it's just too cold or it's windy outside, but um, but yeah, I was really sad that we had to like I I we came home from Disneyland like the very end of February, and I think I've had my air cuchine on ever since. Like we got home and it was 82 in the house. Like, that's pretty warm. That is really warm. It's really warm. So I don't think we've turned it off, but um okay, so I have a question. So what are the biggest signs that our routine isn't working? So do you ever have a thing, even though you have your January reset or just life happens, or just you're just like, this isn't working anymore, let's fix it up and change it up. Because you just did that with your lunch or breakfast or dinner thing, right? Yeah, so I think um execution, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Like just if we are not consistently getting it done, whatever it is. So meal around the table, math, you know, morning, uh, family, like morning basket, family, you call it what do you call it again? Family school. Um just like when it starts to feel more like it's not even about it feeling like a chore for me, it's just like we're not getting it, we're not getting it done, or we're not doing it well. Mostly we're not getting it done. And then I know, okay, well, we gotta, we've gotta fix this so that we can we can make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

How about you? Yeah, mine's totally the we're not consistent with it for sure, or like we're doing it, but I'm not we're only I'm like half butt doing it, like kind of barely doing it, you know. Like we'll do we do World Watch because that's like the fit the news that we watch every day. And then after that, I'm like, okay, what should we do next? I don't want to do anything, but just go to your tours, you know. Just I have an attitude about it, and so I have I always start out the year like with everything planned out, and I didn't plan family school as in depth as I previously did because like last year I think I was kind of finding myself feeling too restricted, restrictive. And so this year I kind of went more like here, this is kind of the things, but I didn't I didn't make a loop schedule and I didn't, I didn't, I'm kind of winging it and I can feel it now that I'm like, oh, this isn't working. Like if I it's because it's taking brain power. But if I had made a loop schedule or I knew what I was gonna do, even though I kind of know what I'm but I don't have it written down, it's just somewhere in my brain. And some mornings my brain is tired and I don't want to think of what do I want to do.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

So do you normally um like not this year, but previously in your normal kind of planning, would you plan every day? So like you or by week, or how do you I plan a loop for the year?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

So that means, you know, so like we will do, you know, history, we're gonna do mad libs, we're gonna do a math game, we're gonna do I see my brain's tired. I can't even think of anything. Read a book, we're gonna, and it would we would just rotate through it. So when I got to the bottom list, I'd go back to the top. So every day, it doesn't matter what day, I just pick up wherever we left off. So I had an overall idea of what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

So let's say you had four things. So let's say you had three things, just to make it easy. So you had math, poetry, and worldwatch. When you say you do all three of those every day, or you might get through two and then the next day you'll pick up with three.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

No. Okay, so I set it up. So there's world watches, and we always start with worldwatch. And then um I'll have normally I would go world watch and then I would do a loop, a loop time. So in my loop, I'm gonna put um scriptures or like we have like a video we always watch every week that kind of introduces what we're studying. Like, so that normally goes like Monday or Tuesday that I try to do, and then we'll have history in the rotation, and then we might be doing an art study. And so I'm gonna loop through those throughout the week. And I'm gonna put like our scripture thing. I know that I want to probably do that every four days so that it gets in the beginning of every week. Um, and then it's I'll end with a read allowed. So I have you know our 15-minute whatever that thing is called, worldwash, and then I do the loop, and then I end with a read alab. How long is it? 20 minutes for the loop and then 20 minutes for the reader. Right? It's it's supposed to be about an hour, but we tend to always start a little bit late. So I give myself that like 10-minute buffer. Um, so normally that's how I plan it out. Like I just but so much of this time we've done World Watch, and then I'm like, okay, let's just play a game and listen to our audiobook because we have not done very much history this year. Like I think we're only probably a third of the way through story of the world. Because I haven't like I didn't have and so now I know I'm like, oh, I do need a little bit more structure. Like, yeah, because I'm I am just it's just easier in the morning when I'm tired and not I don't have the brain capacity or the decision-making capacity. I'm I'm already out of decisions at 8 30 in the morning to just be like, yeah, we'll just do this, you know, just whatever's the easiest.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Do you know? And we've talked about this a little bit on the podcast, but I'm becoming such a more and more of a morning person. But um, and so I'm not having like the brain fog in the morning like you're talking about, but I just can't get my kids to be morning people with me yet. So anybody who's watching this has ideas of how to get your kids like once you get your own body to be a morning person, like how do you drag those kids over the the threshold? Because I am earlier, you all are late. Yes, my kids, my exactly, and we have two our two girls share a room, and it's so hard though, right? Because what they're staying up doing, they're not on electronics, they're not doing you're right, they're reading, they're giggling, they're playing a game. Like it's so hard when they're having that, like that's what their childhood, those memories are what they're made of. Like, you know, they've got a little card table in their room and they'll sit there and play cards. And so it's it's hard for me to shut down that quality bonding time. Um, and it's just so natural. Like I said, there's no arguing, there's no electronics. There, I mean, it's just they're just being all authentic.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Lights out at nine, and they can read if they want to, but lights out at nine, and you have to be in your bed, nine. Past nine. They can be reading past nine. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, they can read for half an hour, like in their bed. Sometimes we're all re read a little bit later. Yeah. Um, but yeah, lights out at nine.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

So their lights will be out, like out, out, and they will still be giggling and talking for another. I mean, they just maybe they just don't fall asleep as fast, but maybe I need them to start like doing some. Maybe I should host a little gym class and make them run a mile before they go out of bed. Just don't get they just don't get tired that easily. And you know, I don't know if I told you this. I think I did mention it on this podcast, but our oldest daughter had really bad insomnia when she was little. Ugh, my kids had yeah, we had the best pediatrician, Dr. Ali. He was amazing. And I remember bringing her in, and he's gosh, how old was she? She's probably at least in kindergarten. And um yeah, she's probably six, seven, eight. Uh, and I said, She just will not fall asleep. And he's like, Well, what time are you putting her to bed? And I was like, Well, like seven, seven thirty. That's way too late or way too early. You shouldn't be leading kids to to bed, you know, quite that early if that's not you know her natural or whatever. So then he suggested nine o'clock. And so uh, but even that for my kids, like they just they struggle to be tired at that time.

unknown 15:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Melatonin for everybody. Okay, so that night, which is supposed to make you a little sleepy, but um, okay, so when you have those times like mine with my family school, and I just realized like ugly like it's it's struggle is real, right? So what do you do? Um what how can you simplify right away if like home post feeling a little what do you do if home school is feeling overwhelming? Do you sometimes I'm like scrap it, screw it, we're done. And I don't want to do that, right? So what what do you do? And I have a thing what I've come up with for mine, but I'm curious, like what do you do when that happens?

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Yeah, we usually hold either a combination of individuals. So we're big and I was raised this way too. But do you guys do family meetings at your house?

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Around the dinner table. I mean, it's kind of like everyday family meeting at my house.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

We have like, because I mean we we eat together too, but we do like family meetings. Um I remember being as a kid, it was so hard for me because I my sister, my mostly my sister and I, if we would make eye contact during the family meetings and they were usually kind of serious, we'd start laughing and we'd get in so much trouble. Um, and that happens sometimes at in our family meetings too. But usually if I'm feeling that way, um if it's an individual child, then I'll address it um with the individual child and have like a little meeting with them. But I tend to find that when one kid is out of sync, several kids are out of sync, which leads me to believe it's more of like right, an administrative problem, right? Like it's mom and dad, like we've either let us fall out of the right rhythm or something's not quite in sync at the house. And so then we'll have a family meeting and and we'll um in addition to an individual meeting. So, like just recently with one of my children, they actually we're kind of currently going through it right now, they are not getting their work done the way that they need to be, despite being very capable of being independent, right? And um, so we are like I came up with a very like a very not strict but very structured daily schedule for this child, um, for them to follow. And we're just doing like some check-ins and things like that. And um, I just address it individually because the rest of the family isn't really out of sync, it's just this one kiddo. And um, yeah, so that's kind of how we we handle it. Or and then in that family meeting or in that one-on-one meeting, we'll decide, you know, is it an attitude problem? Is it a is it a materials problem, or we just thought we'd like this and we don't? Um, is it a is it something that maybe I haven't provided the help that is needed? So I have one, a different child who's struggling in logic right now, and it's really that this kiddo needed more help from me. It wasn't really an added, it wasn't an attitude problem, it wasn't a motivation problem. They just needed more mom time, more help. And so um we brought in another resource, and now we're working going to be working on that together. So yeah, I just family meetings looking at where the like the why, you know, heart problem, attitude problem, motivation, materials, mom, whatever it is, and then we just make a new plan.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yeah, I tend to shocking, make like lists, you know, like all right now, like where am I struggling, who's struggling, what's going on, just kind of like do uh inventory. There you go, that's the perfect word for it. An inventory of like where, you know, like hey, checking in, like how's this kid doing, or or like okay, so what's the struggle? Struggle is family school right now. And what are some like what's the struggle? Like, hey, not knowing what to do, not having the motivation to do it, not you know what I mean, or like having to track down the things. And so from that, I'm like, okay, so what can I do? One, I'm gonna like I have a family school like basket on my fireplace that has well, that I should say is supposed to have all the stuff for family school. Well, right now it is. I was looking in it yesterday when I was having the struggle with From School Yesterday morning, and it still has like our Christmas read alouds in it. I mean, it is just a hot mess. And so I'm like, oh, this is part of the reason, right? Like, I don't have the things that I need that I could just grab and be like, oh, this is what we're doing today because it's easy in front of me. Um, so just coming up with that, you know, like, hey, what's the problem? What are what's the reason for the problem? And then what are some fixes for us? So my fixes are on my list today are to dump out my stupid family school bucket and refill it with the things that I want and to just write down a list. Hey, these are the things that I want to do this spring.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

I don't have to think about it. Like my, you know, when I have the time and the brain capacity, just write it down. I always say anything we can do to make decision fatigue better is always better, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

So that to me is the thing that like, how do I simplify? I just I figure out what's the one thing that's bugging me the most, or what is the thing that is the biggest issue at the moment, and how can I solve that problem? And normally they're easy fixes, they're not normally this big, huge thing, like we have to throw out every curriculum that we own and we have to start from scratch. Right. It's normally tiny little things, but I think I over I blow it out of proportion. Where if I say like, oh, family school's not working, I'm like, school's not working, and maybe I should send the kids back to school. And I, you know what I mean? Like you kind of blow everything out of proportion at night when you're laying in bed and you're like thinking of all the things. And so for me, just like writing it down and what's the one thing that I don't like right now, and how can I fix it? And that normally like resets so many things, just go issue.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Yeah, no, I I agree with that too. I think that um it's easy to feel overwhelmed. And when you get things down on for me, anyways, when you get things down on paper and really write it out and try to start to dissect it, you realize it's really that that big of a problem.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

And so it looks so much smaller. I know what the other thing that I have found, um, kind of like when or how or when not to would be the middle of the night at two o'clock in the morning when you can't sleep, because you know, my struggle is my son is not doing his math curriculum, or we're having a struggle, or we're every day it's a fight. So at two o'clock in the morning when you can't sleep and you're obsessing over it, and then you start searching new math curriculums, and you buy a new math curriculum in the middle of the night, not what to do. Okay, I might have done that before.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

I have practiced so much curriculum, Courtney, in the middle of the night. Yes, and I kind of forget about it in the morning, and then it'll hit me like at some point. And usually when I'm sitting next to my husband, and I'm like, oh, don't do it, people. Just don't do it. Like, no, 12 books off Amazon last night, or I bought a whole new curriculum. Way too many times that I just yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

We have all gone down that rabbit hole. And so I always like, I mean, now I think I finally learned maybe we'll see. I haven't done it in a while, but you just have to one just wait a hot second. No good decisions can be made at two o'clock in the morning, none, or 11 o'clock at night, or anything after your kids go to bed. No decisions can be made, really good ones. Yes, in the heatest moment of the stress. Wait, what'd you say? No purchases. No purchases. Put it in the cart, come back and think about it. Because at nine o'clock in the morning, you're gonna be like, oh yeah, that's not really the problem. Yeah. Anyway, so that I always that's I think my biggest takeaway from any of this is the reset or whatever the problem is cannot happen in the middle of the night.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yes, I agreed. That's so funny. I've never I've never talked to anybody who's also bought and you know or purchased curriculum things in the middle of the night, like I have. So that's hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Or I've done the um I'm gonna lose weight and I'm gonna order like all these like join these weight loss things or these like cookbooks or exercise apps and always in the middle of the night. And have I ever done any of it? No, because morning Courtney is like that was so dumb. Why did you do that? That's so funny. That's hilarious. Um, okay, so that that's probably my one tip on any reset or anytime you're struggling, or just think of it in the light of day when you have some quiet time and write it out. Because honestly, once you write it out, your problems aren't as big as what you think they are. Because when you're in the moment when you have a kid rolling on the ground crying because they don't want to do their math or they don't want to read their book, maybe it's happened at my house before. It's really hard to make a logical decision and not just like scrap it off. I think that like the other my last thing about spring is it's okay to just have a day off, right? Like it's okay if it's a really beautiful day outside, your kids are super distracted because they want to go outside and play, or they want to go swimming in Arizona because it's 105 outside. Like that's okay, let them like it's also a really good incentive to like let's just go fast today, then. That's true. So I think that's probably my other reset thing is it's okay to have a reset day. It doesn't mean you have to reset everything.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

That's very true. Walk away from it and then come back with a new perspective.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah. Sarah McKenzie calls them just because we can days.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

I love it. It's one of those, and she would do it for field trips. Like we'd go bowling on a Tuesday just because we can. Um, but I think it's a perfect like spring reset type thing to just be like, hey, we're gonna go outside or we're gonna go to hike today. Not if you live in Arizona, but anywhere else. Or, you know, it's a beautiful day, especially for you guys, because you guys have had so much cold and yuck. And I guess you're gonna have melted yuck and it's probably gonna be really muddy in your key. So I can't even imagine that.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

We're driving through slush all over the roads. It's it's crazy. Like it's it's madness, but spring is right around the corner. We can feel it.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

This has been a great conversation. I love um just kind of hearing the differences. I think it's just so entertaining how we can be so similar, but yet so very, very different.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Well, this is what I love too about just being real and sharing our story is sometimes it's just nice to know you're not alone. Like I've literally never talked to anybody else who has, like I said, purchased and changed curriculum in the middle of the night. And it just makes you feel a little bit more um like you're part, you know, you're not alone and validated, right? Not the only one. And so um, yeah, these conversations are great.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

All right, I love it. So if you've ever bought curriculum in the middle of the night, comment in the thing so that Jessica knows that she's not alone, that we're not solo people over here at this. All right, everybody have a great week and we will see you next week. Bye.