One Small Habit That Transforms Your Homeschool

Pam: Are you ready for homeschooling to feel joyful again?

Do you long for support as you learn alongside your kids?

Welcome to Homeschool Better Together,

a podcast about building a homeschool experience that works for your family.

I’m Pam Barnhill, and it’s time to step out of the overwhelm and in to the wonder.

Let’s do this today.

I am thrilled to welco DaLynn DeWitt to the podcast. DaLynn is a homeschool mom of three, and they span from toddler all the way up to teen. She married her college sweetheart and they’ve been married for 16 years.

And she and her family live in South Texas with a menagerie of animals, a roping arena, which is so cool, and a couple of rising rodeo stars. DaLynn is a registered dietitian who loves experimenting in the kitchen and reading cookbooks for fun.

She is passionate about passing on a godly heritage and building a culture of family togetherness. Delenn, welcome to the podcast.

DaLynn: Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Pam: I am so glad you’re here. I have seen you in the community for, gosh, a couple of years now, and it is always so much fun to get to spend some time and talk with somebody who I’ve kind of seen around.

So, yeah, it’s great.

DaLynn: Thank you.

Pam: Well,

let’s talk. We’re going to be talking a little bit about homeschool consistency today, and one of the things that you mentioned to me was you’ve had some construction in your house a little bit.

So me too, in the past couple of years.

So let’s talk about that. Kind of one of those struggle times when, you know,

despite your best efforts,

things were out of your control and your home was under construction. What was homeschooling looking like for your family then?

DaLynn: Yeah, let me just recover from the trauma of the memory and I’ll share.

Yeah. You know, last summer, it was the first time I was doing put year homeschool year on autopilot, and it was going well and I had finished about half the modules and it was August, and I told myself, hey, you have time.

We’ll start first week of September, no problem.

And I came home from out of town and this feeling started dripping on my head in the living room. And so the next thing I know, we had to really rope off our house, you know, and do all kinds of crazy isolation.

And we were living in. We had. We were all in one bedroom and we had one bathroom and we had the laundry room and the kitchen, and that was it.

And so I just kind of grabbed my material and threw it all in the kitchen and was kind of freaking out. And my husband was like, you just have to start.

And I was like,

okay, I got a Bible and some wonder studies. Let’s go.

Pam: I love it.

DaLynn: And that’s what we did. We just. We just started where we were.

Pam: So did you have to go through mitigation because of the leak?

Because we. We had a leak. Ours was not our ceiling, but it was in the bathroom.

But then,

you know, it had been going on for a while and we didn’t know about it. It was kind of a hidden leak. And so we had to do mitigation, which I’d never heard of such a thing before,

so. Or were you guys just dealing with the ceiling falling in?

DaLynn: Well, luckily, the ceiling didn’t fall in. It actually had to do with, like a.

The way the installation was installed. It wasn’t even a leak. So it was a problem that had been going on for about a year and a half. It was just.

We didn’t know until finally, you know, the symptoms came. So thankfully we didn’t. We didn’t have to do that. We just fixed it. But it was. It was stressful, you know, having everybody in one bedroom with air mattresses and a toddler at different bedtimes and no curtains in the room,

just. Oh, my gosh,

I don’t know how we survived some of these things.

Pam: So that was the start of your school year, and you said you had a Bible and some wonder studies. You said it was your most consistent time. Yes. Even though it was craziest.

So why do you think so?

DaLynn: Well, you know,

so I feel. I feel like a little bit of an imposter here, talking about consistency, because I did have a break in my homeschool. Like, I homeschooled, and then my kids went to school for a year, and then we came back.

But this year, when we were. Or this last year, when we were gonna homeschool, one of the big things was I felt like the Lord just really put it on my heart to be more eternity minded.

And so I was like,

we’re gonna start with Bible,

and everything else is a bonus. You know, whether you learn to read or not, you are gonna know who Jesus.

And so, you know, that. That ended up being my launching pad. And so I knew that no matter what, we were gonna start with Bible. And then just having that kind of decision of we’re gonna do this,

it helps you to go on to step two and go on to step Three.

And like I said, I didn’t get to finish autopilot, but it did help that I had a vision and I had some goals and I had chosen curriculum. I actually had all about reading and I had chosen my kids math.

So I had a little bit more than just wonder studies in the Bible.

But I had a launch place and I had part of a plan and, and that really helps. And I also think the way that WonderStudies is set up where you it is like open and go for all of your content subjects.

That helped me to have something at my fingertips when my house was unavailable. If I had a computer and some Internet, I could go. And that’s what we did.

Pam: Yeah.

DaLynn: And September was our funnest month. We did apples and it was great. We loved it. I just. One of the most fun things we did was doing the apple stamps. We cut apples in half, put them in paint, stamped and I made a big banner because you know, I was like,

well, we don’t have a house but we at least we’ll have a homeschool room in the kitchen. And we just took that down last month.

Pam: Oh wow. So it’s been there for over a year or almost a year.

DaLynn: Yeah, yeah, we just loved it. It was kind of just our little success banner.

Pam: I love it so much.

You know, it’s funny because we often talk about consistency and like,

like it’s just some big hurdle to be jumped. But you have like very clearly laid this out here.

Really. If you just get that one thing, that one thing you’re going to start with and you make up your mind like I am starting with one thing for you.

It was Bible, you know, and you get that down,

then the consistency, it’s almost like it’s just a launch pad. And you can rock it off of that and say now we can do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

But setting that intention for just one small thing is often what we build upon. For us it was always morning basket, you know,

or doing a read aloud first or something like that. And I think sometimes when moms think about,

oh, I’ve got to be the perfect homeschooler, I’ve got to fix everything.

You really don’t have to fix everything.

You’ve just got to fix one thing and then from there you can keep building.

DaLynn: Yeah, absolutely. I definitely think that’s true.

And I think having had some hurdles even prior to the construction,

knowing that I needed to simplify and, and, and, and pare down on focus. So I, you mentioned Morning basket.

You are the one. I.

I found you a few years ago. I don’t. I don’t know if my friend sent me a podcast or what, but when I was very first gonna homeschool, I was like, oh, my gosh, I love this idea of morning basket.

My son had been into Charlotte Mason School,

so I was familiar with that method. And so I felt like morning basket was a doable way for me to do this with a wide range of kids. And so even though I said it started with Bible, you know, I made it part of the morning basket, where I wanted to bring truth,

beauty, and goodness to the first part of our day. I know we need to read. I know we need to do math. I know the skill subjects are important,

but I felt like if I could get my kids engaged right from the beginning,

we could just go up. We could just go up, you know, and for me, the Bible is the foundation of that, you know, making. Making sure that we have our faith laid.

And. And then I just trust that God will help me with those other layers.

But, yeah, I do. I think definitely simplifying having a launch point. And then, you know, in your planning, you need to know where you’re gonna go next.

But as long, you know, if you don’t have a next yet, at least. At least having a step one.

Pam: Yeah.

DaLynn: Is a great place to start.

Pam: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times we’ll tell moms, like,

if. If you can’t plan a whole school day,

then just plan what you’re going to do first in the morning,

you know, because if you can. If you can, go ahead and think about that the day before and we talk about this inconsistency Bootcamp, when we talk about, like, your index card,

your next day. Ready? Even if you can’t. If it’s just too overwhelming to plan out the entire day, at the very least, if you know what you’re going to do first, you can get your day started from there.

And then a lot of times, just the rest of it falls into place a little bit more, and. And you can get that momentum going. You know,

you talked about having a hard winter, and I. I’m guessing maybe this was last year. There was some sickness and loss and just feeling drained.

What. What do things like that do to homeschool momentum? Is it hard to climb out of that?

DaLynn: Yeah. Well. So, okay. Our house was crazy, like we said. I had not been, like, for my. I was doing put year, homeschool year on autopilot, and I had gotten just to the point where you start kind of working on procedures and lesson plans.

So I had a vision, I had some goals. I had chosen curriculum. I had kind of blocked out my week.

So I felt like I was going September, you know, it was kind of a new year. We did the apple thing. We. We love that. But with rodeo, there’s a lot of travel.

My kids are doing rodeo. And so I felt like kind of as we were going, but I was limping.

And the homeschool Consistency Bootcamp came up in the fall, and I was thinking, oh, my gosh, like, how am I going to add one more thing?

But the thing is, is I was thinking, I want. I want to win the war. You know, I’m not. I’m not trying to win this battle. I’m trying to win the war.

So let me. So instead of like, how am I going to get to this week? I had to think, how am I going to get to May or June?

And so I went ahead and did that. And one of the biggest nuggets from home School Consistency Bootcamp was the minimum viable day. That was such a gift. Because I am such an all or nothing kind of personality, I tend to be a little perfectionisty.

And I needed to say,

this is my good enough day when things are going off the rails.

And so that helped me keep plugging along. But right before Christmas,

we all got the flu, all five of us. And I will tell you, Pam, I have never been so sick in my life. I mean,

my boys and my husband, they were down for about a week, which is kind of a long time for people to be all the way down. But me and my daughter were down for about a month,

and she ended up having a ruptured eardrum. I mean, we were really sick. In the middle of all that, I found out I was pregnant and then ended up losing the pregnancy, like, the beginning of February.

So you’re, like, dealing with sickness and you’re dealing with some heartbreak. And I’ll be honest, like, in that month that we were super sick, we didn’t do much school.

You know, I. I was feeling bad, but at the same time, I thought if we were. Let me do my air quotes. If we were in regular school,

we would not be at school.

If I was a teacher at school, I would be out on sick leave.

And so if I felt like I had the energy, I would read to the kids. We would just do a call and repeat Bible verse, and I would just put on some understudy videos.

And sometimes that just had to be enough until you know, I wasn’t running fever, somebody else wasn’t running fever, and it was a really rough month, but I just kind of told myself, hey, this is an extended, not very fun Christmas vacation.

And, you know, once I felt like I had enough of a clear head coming,

you know, on the way up, I just pulled out my minimum viable day and I just started there.

And once I could get that, you know, a week or two of that, I just started inching my way back up.

So I think one of the biggest things is, you know, that’s just what life looks like. Life looks like sickness, life looks like loss,

Life looks like disruption of our plans.

And I think that even if you have.

Even in a kind of an extended break, like we did several weeks,

we came back and we finished the year. And that’s really what’s important. It felt like failure at the time, but once I got to Maine, I looked back and was like, hey, we started in September, we made it all the way.

That was really the important thing.

Pam: I love that. And I love that you use like the MVD is the jumping off point. Like, we’re going to start with the minimum viable day and we talk about this.

It comes up all the time. And the boot camps like, okay, do I just do the minimum viable day? And we’re like, well, you could do an NVD plus one or an NVD plus two or, you know.

And so you did it, you used it as your jumping off point to keep going.

And I think it’s so important to stress something that you mentioned there. You were talking about,

can I do this bootcamp? Because a lot of times when moms feel overwhelmed with that whole consistency thing, they’re like, wait a second, I feel like I’m failing because I’m not being consistent with my homeschool.

And now you tell me I’ve got to take like a month long course.

But you learned very quickly that it is the work,

right? Doing boot camp is doing school. It’s not like things that you’re doing instead of school. It’s the thing like we expect you’d be doing school. Like the, the tools and the things we’re giving you are the things that are helping you get the school done.

And so I hope that you found it like that was the thing that got you started,

right?

DaLynn: Yeah. Also. Well, with, with the bootcamp, the thing, you know, you’ll have your, your coursework that day. It’s immediately implementable.

So you are immediately implementing something that’s helping your homeschool go better. It’s not like, let me study these things. Let me learn now. I have this steep learning curve now.

How am I going to do this? You are.

The work you are doing is implementing what you just learned in a very short little video into your homeschool the next day.

And so you’re self correcting as you go. So things are improving as you’re doing the bootcamp, which is really giving you a little bit more margin to continue the bootcamp.

And then when you get done,

you know, I think for me,

I had tweaked my day, but my attitude was a lot better,

which made everything better.

Pam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it’s. So we get this question all the time when we open up the bootcamp. People will say, oh, so is it for kit? Is it for little kids or is it for middle school kids or is it for teenagers?

So tell us, Delyn, who is the bootcamp for?

DaLynn: It’s for you, mom and dad and whoever else is home teaching. Whoever is implementing the. Facilitating the education, as I like to call it. Yes.

Pam: Everybody’s like, are you gonna fix my kids? I’m like, no, sweetie, we’re gonna fix you.

DaLynn: We’re gonna fix you, and you probably need it. So. I know I did.

Pam: I did, too. And that was where the boot camp came from. It was just. It was like this long look in the mirror going, oh, sister, you are so kidding yourself here.

You know,

so,

you know, I felt.

DaLynn: Like I keep going back to, like, put your home school year on autopilot too, because I feel like that was my.

I keep saying launch. I don’t know why that word keeps coming out of my mouth. That was my launching point for my school year. But then consistency. Bootcamp was like my deep dive into,

okay, what does this actually look like? I made my projections of what we want to do this year, what I think it’s going to look like now that I’m in real life,

where do I need to modify?

And so bootcamp really helped me. I had. I had some experience, you know, I had some school under my belt at that point to say, okay, this is not working like I thought it was going to, or this is working really well.

Maybe I need to reorder some things. Priorities, activities,

expectations.

And that’s what really helped, is that it kind of gave me a better idea of how to do daily activities,

but it also really helped me manage my expectations.

One of my favorite things, and I don’t know who wrote this, but y’ all had the just do it affirmations.

And it was like, if you’re sad, just do it. You know, I had all.

Pam: Anyway, yeah, yeah, do it anyway.

DaLynn: And my favorite one was like, if you don’t feel like it, do it anyway. And I just felt like I could hear Don Garrett’s voice telling me, if you don’t feel like it, do it anyway.

That was great.

Pam: Voice tell me that all the time.

DaLynn: That’s great. Because guess what? We don’t feel like it more than we do feel like it.

Pam: Yeah,

yeah. That’s the thing. Waiting. If you’re waiting for that, like,

fun. Like, everything is fabulous in my homeschool. The kids are all happy, and everybody’s ready to learn, and the house is clean. And now we’re gonna homeschool. You’re gonna be sitting there for a long time not homeschooling.

Right. Because how often does that happen?

DaLynn: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Pam: So now you have some tools to help you maintain that consistency. Because we know having done the bootcamp and having been doing this for years and years and years, like, we’re gonna fall off the wagon again.

DaLynn: Yeah, we are.

Pam: Yeah. So how do you remind yourself, you know, that you’ve got these, that it’s time to whip em out and use em again?

DaLynn: Oh, that’s a great. That’s a great question.

Because I’ve actually kind of been working on that even this week. Cause I’m kind of finishing up my autopilot. I know a lot of these, you know, super proactive people have already started school.

I’m giving myself to the 1st of September.

But I have a binder. I have a little binder, and it’s purple. Cause I like that color.

And it’s on my desk. And I have my autopilot in there, and I have my bootcamp in there. And I have just kind of like whatever sheet in the module I felt like speaks to me the most, I put it at the front of that divider and on the front.

On the front of the binder. I have. When you feel like your head is on fire,

you know, step one.

And so I would say, you know, when things are really going off the rails,

step one is you need to pray. You need to pray. You need to just stop and pray.

Number two, take some deep breaths. Number three,

remove yourself from the bomb detonator, which could be your kids or your husband.

I put number four, walk outside, but don’t forget to come back.

Number five, put on some music. And then number six, pull out your minimum viable day.

Because honestly, when things are rough,

you don’t have to do all the things.

You just need to do some of the things.

And when you decide ahead of time what your good enough day is, what your good enough mothering is, what your good enough homeschool looks like,

you can just say, you know what? This is good enough for today.

And it is.

Pam: I love it. I love it. Because we can’t be perfect every day.

Actually, there are no days where I’m perfect. But, you know, there are a lot of days where I really strive to do 10 to 10 things. You know, five things, seven things,

three things. But then there are some days where I can just do one or two things,

and that’s. That’s got. And it’s better than doing nothing.

DaLynn: You know,

I think some of this comes with age. I’m in my mid-40s. I’m staring down the barrel of 45, so, you know, I’m right there.

And I am just getting more okay with that because I can go really hard for about seven days, and then I’m gonna need a few days to recover. I don’t have that benefit of being 31 anymore where I can just, you know, keep buckling through.

Sometimes I do have to just step back and say, you know what? We’re doing a great job. This is enough. Like, we didn’t get to that one lesson. We’ll do it tomorrow.

This is where loop scheduling comes in. Like,

hey, we’ve done all that everyone’s capable of doing today. We are going to pick up tomorrow where we left off today,

and it’s going to be great.

Pam: Yeah, I love it. Okay, so if a mom is listening right now and she feels like she’s failing,

what’s something she can do? What’s something she could take away today to feel more consistent or homeschool?

DaLynn: Okay, well, I would say if you’re a Christian,

just read a Bible verse to your kids and have them call and repeat it a couple of times.

You can do that right now.

Grab a book. Grab a book and get your kids in a comfy spot and read aloud. I think so often we underestimate the power of God’s word and reading to our children.

You know, both of those things accomplish a lot of things.

And I think you just start right there.

And then, you know what? Once you get done with that, you are very often reconnected to your kids, which can be very energizing. And then you feel like you can go on to the next thing if that, you know,

if that right there is not exactly in your wheelhouse. I think you Pick your one thing. I think you need a launch point.

You pick your one thing that you know you can do,

that can regroup you. That might be even like nature study. You might just want to go outside and do nature study,

but I think you pick your one thing that you know you can do,

and then you can build from there.

Pam: Do it and build from there. Yeah.

So we talked about this a little bit earlier, but I want to give you a chance to address it again. Like, if somebody’s curious about boot camp, but they’re like, like,

I don’t know, boot camp.

Can I do this? Do I have time for this?

What would you tell them?

DaLynn: Don’t be a wussy.

Pam: This is why you’re my people. Don’t be a wussy.

DaLynn: Oh, no, no, no. I.

I would say do it. I would say do it because it really didn’t take that much time.

It really did not take that much time. And I felt like it really made a huge shift in me feeling empowered to do what I wanted to do.

Pam: Yeah. What about the community? I noticed that you’re active in there.

DaLynn: Yeah,

I love the homeschool, better together community.

You know, I’ve been here for a few years now. I’ve even gone to be. I’ve been able to do some of yalls in person things and meet other people, which has been really great.

I’ve. I’ve gone to other communities, too. Just kind of like, see, hey, what do y’ all have going on over here? But I always come back here because I feel like we have some really experienced moms in here that have been doing this for a long time or have a lot of children and have a lot of wisdom.

I feel like we have some really perky moms who, like, they are always going to post.

Okay. They’re always going to respond to you. They’re going to. If they don’t know the answer, they’re going to go research and respond to you. So we have some great cheerleaders in there, and then we have some good accountability partners.

I think Dawn’s excellent accountability partner. I think that Lainey, she may not consider herself one, but I think she is because she’s very consistent and she’s a. You know, she’s a very veteran homeschool mom.

But I love the community, and one thing I really like about the resources that you guys offer is that I can come back to them,

you know, with. With Autopilot. I bought it once, and I can keep coming back. I also like Finishers Club because It’s time that I am designating that I will be working on my homeschool with other people.

And very often I’m asking questions to your facilitator, and they’re usually helping me. You know, it’s like one on one counseling for a little while with whatever. Whatever it is I’m working on.

But bootcamp, I think, was the biggest thing for me to.

It was my biggest reality check.

Okay, this. This is gonna happen.

Pam: Our.

DaLynn: Our struggles are gonna happen. And what are my concrete tools that I can use?

You know, when you’re in the ditch,

to get out of the ditch, and that’s really what you need. All the other things, they’re. They’re helpful and they’re good, but this is like,

you are going to be in the ditch and you need to help, have help get out. And that is what bootcamp is.

Pam: I love it. Yeah. Because I say all the time, like, it doesn’t matter. Like, you could be a unit study homeschooler, a Charlotte Mason homeschooler, a classical homeschooler, an unschooler. You could be whatever you want.

But the most important thing is that you be consistent with whatever you choose. Like, consistency trumps everything when it comes to,

am I doing enough in my homeschool? Are you getting up every day and doing it whether you feel like it or not? You know, and then.

DaLynn: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with that.

Pam: Yeah. Well, Delyn, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your story and just, you know, it’s very vulnerable to come on and tell everybody,

you know, I struggle.

DaLynn: Yeah. Yes, it is.

Pam: But we appreciate you doing that and encouraging other moms and just thanks so much for being part of our community.

DaLynn: Well, thanks for having me. And I just want to say one last thing after. Even though last year was really hard, having autopilot and bootcamp has made us has made me feel really excited about this upcoming year.

Pam: That is awesome. I hope you have the best year, and I hope no ceilings fall and no sickness comes and all of that stuff. Stuff. So, yeah, I hope you have a great year.

DaLynn: Thanks, Pam. Thanks so much.

Pam: That’s our show for today.

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