Student Maturity Happens in Waves

Tiger Lilly aka the new Willa Wonka

Doing School On the Road tested My patience and Their Maturity

Kids sometimes get the work done without nagging, overseeing and punishments. This last few weeks were like that, until the most recent week, I had to withhold fun activities before going on trip to get Speed Racer to finish his work on time.

The family went on a cruise, and stayed in Long Beach, CA for a time. The benefits of my job, was a discounted hotel room! Woot! But I also had to do some extra working hours to go without using all my vacation time, which I am saving up for a big family trip to Sydney, Australia and New Zealand next year.

It's been a struggle to post since I am trying to make my writing (publishing) side business. I will be revamping this blog once I publish my book in 2019, so stay tuned.

This week I get to work from home while completing some training. I find that being at home has sapped me of strength and a large amount of my motivation to do 'extra'. I guess since I am going doing this temporarily I don't have enough time to build a routine. However, I actually find I get LESS accomplished with housework and my son's school work with being home. Haven't figured out why yet.

KIDS PROGRESS

SPEED RACER's been bored. 
We have found a way to get rid of his boredom (for the most part) by having a multi-family game night and monthly mult-family cook out and get together with friends of ours with kids the same age. It's been a good thing for all the families.

Denying Being Homeschooled?

Lately, though, my son has been telling his non-homeschool friends (which he has much more of than homeschooling friends) that he goes to regular school and that he is in the 10th grade. He doesn't want them to know he is taking college classes since he just wants to be like 'one of the guys."

I plan to do a deeper post on this.

Homeschool Classes:
Investing: Finished this online Youtube course. 
Still haven't started playing the games. It's on the list for this weekend.
Recreational Pilot License Training: He wants to get this next summer so we are adding it into his curriculum. 

-He finished three videos with one quiz. He actually did pretty good.

Black History: This week we studied the MOORs and BLACK ACHIEVEMENTS

-  We sit in my room and in my bed eating popcorn watching these documentaries.

Astronomy: Something he wants to explore.

- Didn't get to these. Well, we are going on 2 months and haven't even picked up the lesson videos.

Bible Review: We are doing this together with videos. The Truth Unveiled Video playlist has been good for him. He asked several deep questions and we did some deep diving on topics.

- He and I finished 2 of these (he hates to admit it, but he likes these) and we are almost done with the series.

Cooking and Car Repair: The cooking I am letting him build his own recipes and prep dinner. Car Repair, he is helping his father and brother fix our cars. Oil Changes, Brake Pad changes, etc.

- He made smoothies and tacos this week, the rest of the meals I made.
- Car Repair - His dad is showing him how to change the oil in our van. Son is helping.

PE: Distance Canoe Team, Martial Arts and Breakdancing.

- Martial Arts - getting ready for belt test
- Breakdancing - only one day practice - Friday.

JavaScript and Unity 3D Programming: A Saturday small class with a teacher that meets from 8am til 1:30pm. All other kids are public school kids.
- The Hackathon was a good experience for him, he is also working on an online Java course.

Compuscholar (formerly homeschool programming) - Java
This is working well with our schedule and for reinforcement to his weekend class. He does this independently and this is an upgrade from the former HomeSchool Programming series curriculum.


College ClassesFinished: Biol 101 and Biol 102 (lab)
Finished: Info Sys in Org
Finished: Research WritingAdvanced Business Writing 
In week 4 of 8
-Finished three papers
-Finished 8 discussions and responses
-Finished 3 quizzes
-Finished project

College Algebra 
In week 4 of 8
-Finished 3 quizzes
-Completed 4 Discussion Homework



TIGER LILLY the Homeschool Graduate with a BS Degree, now Working on MS Degree

Is doing a great job of juggling her new full time position, her graduate degree course and her workout schedule.

In addition in her free time she has taken on some art commissions and is creating a bot for her gameplay website.

Also, participating in Nanowrimo and trying to finish her first novella and chapter of her Web Comic.

Dungeons and Dragons is something she loves to play and meets a group with her father to play one day a week.

WORK and HOME BALANCE Working and Homeschooling 

MEAL PREP: We are trying to revamp the meals we are doing since Tiger Lilly and I are signing up for Weight Watchers.

HOUSE CLEANING: I had to put the chore chart back up. They started arguing about who's day it was to do what. 

LESSON PLANNING: I didn't do the lesson plan for two weeks and it was a disaster. This week I was back on track and so is Speed Racer. 

MARRIAGE CHECKUP: We went on a marriage outing with our church and with another couple and had a great time.

SELF CARE: Took several naps and got a massage.

Balance Check Up - Working and Homeschooling

Sometimes I don't know how I do this.

HOMESCHOOL

WORK FULL TIME OUTSIDE THE HOME

RUN A SIDE BUSINESS

BE A WIFE, MOTHER, TAXI DRIVER...the list goes on.

My Motto?

'CAN'T means WON'T'

One thing my humble and challenging upbringing has taught me was ... there are ways to get it all done - if you are creative.

Finding the Right JOB

This is the area where most parents have a major challenge. Finding a job that allows the flexibility of home teaching. My husband and I have played with all types of combinations so that one of us could be available and home most times with out kids. He worked night jobs as a Security Guard, Help Desk Technician, Real Estate Broker, Call Center Manager and on. I've worked in the Information Technology field most of my life. I actually changed careers because I loved technology but also loved the flexibility my techie friends had.

With the challenge of finding this balance, I've even helped my older daughter groom her career to have a wide variety of opportunities that afford her the ability to have a flexible work schedule.

The cost of flexibility is usually hit in the (1) Income (2) Location (3) Job Advancement areas. But it's not a trade off you can't recoup later.

Having A Spouse That Helps

This is where I am blessed. My husband has played the role as 'work from home' dad. Where he cared for the kids in the early morning until he left to meet his clients when we had an at home business.

We share in the schooling. He takes early morning and late evening. I take the midday afternoon and do the coordination.

Curriculum that's Easy And Teaches for you

I have to find a curriculum that keeps us both coordinated and does most all of the teaching for us. This has really helped both of us find success without stress in homeschooling.

We'd love to do some really fun stuff, but the truth is, to keep the homeschool train running nicely, having a box curriculum where I can have my kid call a free tutor, have the curriculum all laid out, have everything I basically need to teach my kid makes life easier.

I do add on 'supplements' but I make sure they are also, little maintence, on the parental part.

Using Outside Childcare or Tutors

There were times where my husband and I had overlap on our workdays. When our older kids weren't able to be home with the younger two, we hired a 'Home Helper'.

Having the 'Home Helper' has been GREAT! She administers the kids schooling for that day, makes their lunch, tidy up the main level, and puts our crock pot dinner on so when I get home - dinner's done.

Work Outside the Home OR Inside the Home

We've done both. Working inside the home has been much more challenging for both my husband and I - especially when the kids were younger.

Working From Home - leaves very little space or lines in the sand for 'work-time/home-time'. We ended up still needed to flop our schedules and it seemed the kids never understood the 'working from home' idea.

Working Outside the Home - this works well for us. It's a clear division of home vs work. Also, it allows us to network with other people in our fields. We also, even get out for lunch breaks with each other, or our co-worker friends. In most cases - the pay has been better when we've worked outside the home.

Stay Organized!

This is a BIG deal. Whenever we don't do this, life is chaos.

Things that must be done to keep things rolling.

Make a Daily To Do List, checking off every item as you go.

Do this on Sunday's or set aside a 'Planning' day for the below:

- Workbox System in place (Sue Patrick's Workbox System)
- Meal Planning and Prepping for the week
- Lesson Plans - Weekly Schedules posted and given to the kids and all the 'teachers'
- Schedule in 'sleep' time
- Use electronic calenders like google or gmail calender to remind all parties of schedule

DO YOU WORK AND HOMESCHOOL? WANT TO? HOW DO YOU?

WEEKLY WRAPUP

Tiger Lilly schedule has changed. Her Writing courses ended last week. WriteGuide and Time4Writing were great courses. In place of them she is starting Sociology and Psychology which are on her CLEP test list for next Spring.  Finally, she's finishing up her Youth Digital, MOD Design course and hope to start on her 3D animation course with them over the weekend. 

We are really trying to get her ready for the Analyzing Literature CLEP and she is struggling with it (but we just started). I realized she needs more time so I moved the test date another week out.

Speed Racer is loving his new class, Minecraft Homeschool 'Vikings'.  He's all set up, finished his initial quiz and orientation and loves it! We also started WORD UP! with Compass Classroom to get him up to par on root word association since we aren't doing Latin. His other courses are going rather well. Overall, he's calming down and becoming a more focused student! Whew! His big sister Rose who administers school for me a few days of the week said he's on track.

He's getting ready for a big Breakdancing battle this weekend. Also, he loves Tennis (we just started it last week - he complained initially) and is getting close to being rewarded a strip in martial arts.

WORKING PARENT

Nothing this week went as planned. It was a complete chaotic week since I didn't do any meal planning on Sunday and barely got lesson plans done.

Work balance has been off since I started a new project at work, but I did get to go out with work friends for 1 hour in which I sacrificed homeschool work that evening to do.

However, because of the dissaray of our schedules, I started working on next week's schedule so this won't happen again :-D