I’m recovering from a month-long bout of Homeschool TMI.
TMI means “too much information.” Homeschool TMI is the name I’ve given to the fact that there are SO many good resources available to homeschoolers.
How do you possibly decide which is the best one for you and your kids? What if you pick the wrong one? What if you find something awesome and then a publisher releases a brand new updated set of whatever-it-is? What do you do?
If you’re like me and you struggle with even a minimal amount of buyer’s remorse or have an overly-idealized vision of what education should be like, you might be a Homeschool TMI case waiting to happen.
Homeschool TMI wasn’t so much a problem for me until recently. I was content with the resources I had and the girls responded very well to the curriculum I was sort of bushwhacking around with. Living overseas limited my resources somewhat. I mean, there’s only one teacher supply store in this emirate (that I’m aware of) and shipping costs so much money so we didn’t have very many books.
But then we went to the States this summer and boy did I have fun at Hobby Lobby. Our family usually gets a gracious luggage allowance between the States and here, so I filled two suitcases with stuff I can’t get here.
And then…. I discovered The Book Depository. They ship for FREE worldwide. I used up the rest of our homeschool budget at TBD and within two weeks reading books and workbooks galore started filling up our post office box. One time I even had to go to the post office to retrieve a rucksack full of Mercer Mayer books and Kumon workbooks.
That’s right about when I started feeling the effects of Homeschool TMI.
Every day for the last month when I did school with the kids I had to just tell myself to put one foot in front of the other and just do something. Even the time-tested adage of “Read to your kids” turned into a paralyzing suggestion. Which book?!
Three friends helped me snap out of it. One of them said to just forget about whether or not there’s a better set of flashcards for sight words or an anatomy book with better illustrations. There’s always a better resource. So stop procrastinating and Internet surfing and dive into what you’ve got.
Then a sweet friend who is a veteran homeschooling mamma heard about my feverish Homeschool TMI and came over to help me organize all of this stuff. She showed me how to maximize the little space around my “office” to accommodate the abundance of supplies I’ve acquired. Bless you, Cindy! And then Miss Kate, Redeemer’s children’s ministry coordinator, rifled through all of it and gave me a revised action plan given all the new supplies I now have.
I think the Homeschool TMI fever is breaking. Thank you, ladies!
