This is Part 4 of our Homeschooling series by Deb Gallardo of The Story Ideas Virtuoso.

This article is a kind of wrap up for the character building homeschooling article series. By now you should have given your family’s needs, personalities, and your own commitment to character building enough consideration to create the structure, however strict or loose you choose, for your household. With that in mind, here are some final considerations and suggestions on character-training.

Consider insisting on a definite bedtime and enforcing it (with predetermined consequences). You would be wise to put a halt to those late-night reading sessions under the blanket with a flashlight, as well. There is plenty of time during the normal homeschool routine, and during quiet times throughout the day and evening, for your voracious readers to inhale more books. You want to foster reading, not create an environment where it’s an illicit activity.

Bedtime can be as much a time of conflict as getting up. Don’t let it turn into a battle. Start training your children to wind down their activities one hour before they get ready for bed. Establish a bedtime routine for everyone, including parents, so you are modeling this good habit. (This doesn’t mean you must go to bed when the children do, but show them that you have your nighttime rituals, too.)

You might read something as a family, have devotions, sing songs, or play quiet music while everyone puts things away and otherwise prepares for the next day. Keep to calming activities and avoid those that stimulate. Agreed, this is easier said than done, but if you’re serious about getting your children to bed so they will be healthy and alert, you absolutely must help them to wind down. Some children just keep going until they fall over. (So do some parents!)

For the first month or two, have the same bed- and wake-up-times 7 days a week. After this, schedule one day a week when wake up time is one or two hours later, BUT without allowing a later bedtime. Our internal clocks can get out of kilter so easily that it’s best not to upset a routine once it’s established.

Remember that your academic schedule is your own, and education is going on all the time if you provide an environment conducive to learning. That would include a place filled with books, educational games and videos, supervised or monitored Internet learning and research, and lots of discussion about what the children are studying, what’s in the news, what books they’re reading, what they like best about each book, etc., using every possible “teachable moment.”

For example, let’s say it’s a Saturday and you are moving large furniture pieces. You must decide where you will put them, the best way to get them in or out of the rooms, how to maneuver through doorways, up steps, and in or out of the house. This is a great opportunity to teach problem solving, visualization and even some physics, disguised as “How do we best move this big sofa?” You could even include drawing the room and furniture items to scale. That helps with map skills.

Or perhaps you have a home business and are teaching the children how to fill orders accurately, how to do the bookkeeping, how to print shipping labels, how to pack a shipping box, etc.

Maybe you are opening bank accounts for each child and want them to maintain their own spreadsheets or Quicken files.

If you keep a blog, even 10-year-olds can cut and past information into your blog form and save for further editing.

Field trips to the library get everyone out of the house, it’s true, but don’t do it merely when no one feels like school that day, including you. Make it a regular part of your routine, as often as once a week. More often than that, unless your children are doing research that involves actual books (please don’t let them rely solely on the internet for their research!), cuts into your schedule.

If you tack a grocery visit onto the field trip, be aware that middle-of-the-day shopping with school-aged children still raises eyebrows, so have a polite answer ready. Use the trip as a multi-faceted lesson on nutrition, best prices and budgets.

Plan real field trips to interesting places, preferably mid-morning. You’ll avoid crowds and rush hour traffic on either end and midday.

When you get home, have each child immediately create a report about the experience while it’s still fresh. This should include drawings, digital or “instant” photos, paraphrased information from the website, plus handouts and souvenirs.

Present the information as written reports or PowerPoint presentations to Dad, and email them to grandparents and other interested relatives.

Submit field trip reports online at homeschool sites that accept such submissions.

Set up a homeschool blog AHEAD OF TIME (easiest type of website to create) where they can post their work. This is yet another valuable learning experience!

Once again, your ultimate goal is to help your children to develop their maximum human potential. There are any number of “correct” ways to do this. Only you can decide what is best for your household.