[Tea] One More One Thing Tip

Welcome to "Tea with Julie," a weekly missive by me, Julie Bogart. My wish is to give you food for thought over a cup of tea to enhance your life as an educator, parent, and awesome adult. Glad you're here. Pinkies up!
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Cincinnati, May 25, 2024

Hi Friend,

Here's one more One Thing tip: the nagging issue that you keep avoiding in your homeschool? Go ahead and tackle some of it tomorrow. You don’t have to do it perfectly. You don’t even need to purchase curriculum.

Get online tonight or early tomorrow morning, and figure out how you might address a small bit of ONE area that’s bothering you.

You might feel you’ve completely forgotten to teach the names of the states or your address to your youngest children.
Perhaps one of your kids doesn’t know how to spell your family's complicated last name.
Maybe you want to show your kids the continents and you haven’t bought a globe yet. Enter the Internet!

What if your child isn’t reading yet? Tomorrow, do ONE thing that moves you closer to reading instruction. Maybe you spend fifteen minutes doing research. Maybe you spend a few minutes talking to the late reader and find out if she’s ready to try again. You ask her to look at reading programs with you. Maybe you try a totally new approach: you read to your daughter putting your finger under the words and never ask her to do anything but follow along. Maybe you make play-doh from scratch and shape the lowercase alphabet and say the sounds as you do.

Whatever you choose, do a tiny portion of it.

Skip count in the car all the 7’s until you get to the doctor.
Listen to your son explain the video game to you.
Have Poetry Teatime in the middle of the mess with your iPad instead of poetry books.
Spend one hour cleaning the family room so that you KNOW where the math books are and you don’t ignore that problem another day.
Make one healthy salad and eat it for lunch.
Get the analogue clock and spend 30 minutes with everyone learning how to read it.
Tie shoe laces until everyone can tie their own without help (except the really little ones).
Or teach everyone 4 feet tall and over how to do their own laundry.

That goal you wish you could address? Say to yourself, "Enough. I'll start now. I will do just a little bit toward that goal."

Then do it. Congratulate yourself tomorrow night, and pour a glass of wine or eat a half mango with lemon juice or savor a square of your favorite dark chocolate or go for a run!

Do whatever it is that celebrates your commitment to doing that One Thing—whatever it is.

Ready? Go!

Warmly,

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