When Professional Blogging and Homeschooling Collide

What to do when professional blogging and homeschooling collide:

A mom who decides to homeschool her children has her hands beyond full. Her days start before the sun comes up and continue until sheer exhaustion causes her to collapse into bed. Yet, her passion for providing her children the best education possible makes up for the lack of sleep and time for herself.

Along the way, many homeschool moms reach a place where they need an outlet. They desire to put what they’ve learned on their own homeschool journey to use. They recognize that they have knowledge and wisdom to share that can help other homeschool families. Some homeschool moms become part of homeschool co-ops where they can help teach. Others teach classes online. While a few of us enter the world of professional blogging, combining our passion for teaching and our desire to share what we’ve learned throughout our homeschooling journey.

When I began homeschooling my children I hadn’t even heard of blogging. I was working part time and teaching my son in the afternoon and evening after I finished work. When my son finished his 1st grade year at a private school, I was able to quit my job and bring him home to homeschool.

At the time my husband was a full time, self-employed commercial fisherman with an ever changing schedule. If the weather was beautiful he was out on the ocean and if the weather was bad he was at home. This caused great difficulty in keeping our son focused on his lessons when daddy was home.

So, I began looking into alternate homeschool schedules online and was unable to find any ideas or resources. I knew that a year round homeschooling schedule was right for us, yet there were no helps online for how to get started. I also noticed that homeschool and educational blogs didn’t have resources for homeschooling year round. So, I began on my own. I designed our own homeschool schedule to fit my husband’s commercial fishing season.

Little did I know that this was just the beginning. God had bigger plans for me than I ever imagined. In a few short years, He would have professional blogging and homeschooling collide in my life.

God gave me the blog name, Year Round Homeschooling, and gifted me the desire to help homeschool moms find freedom to use the entire calendar year to their advantage. I loved to write and even had a personal blog that I wrote on for fun, but I had never considered blogging professionally until God laid it on my heart.

Professionally blogging and homeschooling is possible. It can even be beneficial to your own homeschooling journey. You’d be amazed at how differently you look at your own homeschooling when you write about it online for the whole world to see. When you receive an email from a homeschool mom who is in need of prayer, encouragement, advice or curriculum help, you know without a doubt that what you’re doing matters.

5 Tips for Blogging Professionally and Homeschooling Your Children

• Find your niche

There are a lot of homeschool blogs online, but many of them are not niche based. Consider your strengths and weaknesses. Pray about what God would have you share with homeschool families around the world. Take a look at what you’ve customized for your homeschool, you just might find a niche that hasn’t been blogged about extensively.

• Keep your life in balance

Remember this order. You’re a wife and mother first, a homeschooler second and a blogger third. You have a lot on your plate with the first two, but when you add the third to your life you must always remember that it’s place is third. Otherwise, your relationships with those you love most will struggle and your homeschooling journey will falter.

• Write a blog mission statement

You may know right now, in this moment why you’re a professional blogger, but in a little while, when the rubber meets the road, when your stats aren’t what you’d hoped, when you receive backlash from your family or friends or when the first negative comment is made on your blog, you’ll need to be reminded of your why.

• Include your children

My kids have helped me review curriculum, create printables and graphics and have even written posts for me. Now that they are teenagers they aren’t as excited about helping me with just anything, so I am more picky about what reviews I take on because it is important for me that I include a student’s view on the resources I share for the homeschooling community.

• Create a schedule

Having specific days and times when you work on your blog is just as important for you as it is for your family. If you push yourself too hard, then you will end up burnt out and wondering what you were thinking becoming a professional blogger. Your family will begin to resent you and your blog even if it benefits them in some way.

• Have fun

Professional blogging is always changing. It is a lot of work. Make sure that you enjoy it and have fun! The possibilities truly are endless, just ensure that you don’t work yourself so much or so hard that you dread pulling up your website or creating that new resource.

I love blogging professionally. There have been amazing experiences and opportunities along the way. I have met my best friends through the blogging world in some way. It is a journey that I can’t imagine not taking part in.

If you’re considering becoming a professional blogger, I encourage you to take time to talk to your husband and kids and spend time in prayer asking for God’s direction. Blogging professionally takes a lot of work and homeschooling does too. In the end, you have to decide whether you and your family take on both of them.