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





Learning to Prioritize-Shortening Homeschool Days

I have been conditioned. Yep, used to a long Traditional School day of 8 hrs of school + transportation time. In addition to 2 hours of After-schooling with homework.

SHORT HOMESCHOOL DAY

So being fairly new to the homeschooling arena, I was in disbelief when parents complained about how long it took them to teach their kids in a day.

I mean I considered 4-5 hours for an Elementary / Middle Schooler to be a breeze. Even with both my husband and I being working parents we could easily pull that off.

In addition, my kids considered the day short and more directed. Even enjoyable compared to the alternative of traditional school.

However, my homeschooling peers were balking at me when I told them that my kids were spending upwards to 5 hours 'doing school' and sometimes 7 hours if I added in their chosen extra curricular subjects.

IS PROPER INSTRUCTION BEING DONE?

What it boils down to is not the TIME but the instruction. Every parent schools differently and if they can merge play and learning - then great. That means 'formal' instruction isn't being done, but the child is still learning the tools needed to be educated.

My approach was to keep my kids in line with traditional school routines, structured studies with a flexible schedule that is allowed us by homeshooling. Therefore if my kids had to make a transition back to traditional school, they would be conditioned to do so. Not only that, but I like the order and format of a structured day.

ANYTHING CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED IF DONE SO CREATIVELY

I've considered ways to get learning in during the summer, and in doing so, I stripped their curriculum down to the bare bones. Math, Writing and Science. If a parent makes those three subjects their main focus and add in other subjects in a semester, quarterly year or block schedule, condensing school down to 2-3 hours is doable as long as the core subjects are maintained. I selected Math, Writing and Science because those are subjects that need constant care and feeding and to neglect those would show some degradation of learning.

My Weekly Wrapup:

This week had some highs and lows but it all met up in the end.

Speed Racer has been sneaking downstairs and watching TV until 4am in the morning. Yep, he was busted two times. Even with the reprimand - TV wins.

The effects? Well he was cranky when it was time to start school work and highly unmotivated.

He is one of those kids that loves to stay up late but hates waking up. This was a major problem when he went to traditional school because it put him in a bad disposition.

He doesn't have TV or video game access in his bedroom so he waits until we are all sleep and sneaks down to the living room to watch til he falls out.

I'm considering putting a TV in his room just to appease this issue, but I don't think it would be productive.

Mom is still trying to figure out a way to circumvent this behaviour - so stay tuned.

Instruction Completed.

Speed Racer's Mid-Morning Work
He attacked his Teaching Textbooks (supplemental Math), Xtramath.org, ArtTango.com, Tynker.com and IXL (Language) in the mornings with his home helper watching.

Afternoon with Mom and Evening Studies with Dad
When I got home we did Art History (a book we are reading), DiscoveryK12.com (their language program), Sequential Spelling, MangoLanguages.com (Spanish), and his Abeka DVD subjects he does with his Dad are (Bible (only 2 days), Math6, Reading, Writing, Language Arts, History, and Science). School ended around 9:30pm but one night at 10:30pm when Speed Racer decided to make paper planes during math (side effect of lack of sleep from late night watching TV)

Tiger Lilly has been rockin' it out this week. Even though last week I noticed there were some quizzes she didn't finish. So guess what she was doing for 'homework' over the weekend? Yep, makeup Quizzes. Oh, and she decided to skip all the word problems in Teaching Textbooks for the last 10 lessons - so those 10 problems will be part of her 'homework' this weekend.

Tiger Lilly's Mid-Morning Work
She finished her Teaching Textooks (supplemental Math practice for Alg 2), Landry Programming course (Wed only w/ homework done on weekend), Critical Thinking Course with Currclick.com (Thu only with homework done on weekend), Youthdigital.com MOD Design (Java), Writeguide (8 week course done every other day) and Time4Writing.com (Grammar - done daily for 8 weeks).

Afternoon with Mom and Evenings with Dad
She's studying for her Composition and Analyzing Literature CLEPs so she's doing the InstantCert Flashcards review and a sample exam weekly. After she completes that she does her Abeka DVD courses (daily courses: Algebra 2, US History, Spanish, Chemistry), these are done 2 times a week (Physics, American Gov't, Economics) and on Friday's we do Art (See the Light DVDs).

Working Parent's Recap

Home Helper is now working with kids two times a week. It's working out and giving us an earlier time of work completion. So on 2 days the kids are finished school work by 4pm. They don't like the fact they have to wake up earlier on those days.

Lawn Care. I ended up not having to hire anyone. Once my husband and son realized I was firing them from the job, they jumped in and did the lawn. Hummm.

Meal Planning. Since I prepped everything this past Sunday, dinners were ready and on the table every night.

Cleaning. Still can't find a cleaning lady, so Saturday we all did a deep cleaning and tidy up. During the week I washed clothes while doing school with the kids. So the house stayed tidy. Speed Racer does the dishes and Tiger Lilly cleans the bathrooms.

Rest. I had an average of 5.5hrs sleep nightly. Mainly because I have been staying up to watch television, read or be time-sucked into Facebook. I will try to do better. I am also working on a business and my writing gig where I have some deadlines to finish, so that's also kept me up later. But I will do better next week!