how do you schedule?

[mrscoyote]

I would love to here how you organize your days. It seems by the time I get morning chores done (house and animals), coffee checking e-mail and other msgs it is 10 or later then lessons and breakfast is usually closer to lunch time. Then add in scouts, baseball, church on Wed and Sundays and I will be starting up a ladies book club this week. I just need more time in the day.
Nancy

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Lunch needs to be quick and easy, so I don't have to be starting in the kitchen at 9 or 10.....too many hours away from kids.
When I'm doing my animal care, I expect DD 17 to be doing inside chores. Possibly DD 9 also, but otherwise they are expected to start some of their lessons that don't require my presence. For example. DD 9 is on her 6th week and has 3 more weeks on spelling. I keep track of what words she missed and after a few weeks she has to re-test on her missed words, so that when 9 weeks come, she is more likely to pass the unit test....well she has shown me that she still needs to study her missed words, so I have a loose leaf paper all ready for her to write the missed words on, which I expect her to have completed before I come home from work at noon.
If I can keep them busy, on their own, doing what they are able to do while I tend to some grown up stuff, then I can sit down with them and guide them thru what they really have to have me for.
Once I am sitting down with them and we are on a good roll, we can do lots of lessons in no time. Its at those moments that I know I'm teaching more than the public school teachers are able to do with their classes, but its to get a chance to do that. You really need to have a good 2 hours to devote to your child. To pull it off, you might need to get your kids to help with more chores, so you can finish sooner. Thats part of homeschooling too because it teaches them responsibility.
The earlier you get started the better. I have to keep time in mind because once I start hearing those afternoon school buses coming, I know the public school invasion is about to occur. Sometimes I give in and let my kids play and sometimes I let the extra kids come in, provided they let me finish the lesson I'm on. Sometimes I decide its time for Religion class because those kids can't get that at school and even if they go to religion class at church, it won't be as good a lesson as the homeschool program offers. My biggest hinderance has been the neighborhood kids and family that doesn't understand how limited my time is.....If I'm supposed to be teaching and its 10:30am, I need to teach; not talk on the phone. Also, makes me crazy when relatives think my 17 year old can run all over the bayou with them.....Hello, go get your other teenage relatives out of their school to go shopping.

 

[Wannabefree]

I always had my kids at the kitchen table while I did chores in the kitchen, that way if they had questions that didn't require my direct attention they could ask while I worked and get their studies done independently. Sometimes we even did school work in the car on the way to run errands. Our homeschool books were self teaching though, gave ample directions, and needed little in the way of parental "teaching." There were days my kids got their work done without a single question, and then some days where they got confused and we had to sit down and go over every detail. We worked through lunch sometimes studying with a sandwich or whatever. I loved the flexibility of homeshooling, and we never didn't meet our goal for the day. We didn't have much in the way of a true schedule, we just did what we had to do to get it done, and it usually went pretty smoothly. If a day was definately going to be too crowded with activity, they'd get the day off as a holiday, but that wasn't often enough to cause issues. The biggest help was to get them going on their own, and not have to hover over them to get them to do their work. I'd have been checking emails, feeding animals, and such WHILE they work at the table, rather than before I got them started on schoolwork. I did require them to have a specific wake up time, and a specific time to begin after breakfast, but beyond that, we were pretty loose on scheduling.

 

[mrscoyote]

Thanks guys. It's good to hear how others get along. We had a different lifestyle when I schooled our to older daughters who are now 25 and 26. Dh was still active duty and we lived the city life. Now with Dakoda who is 8 we live in the country and Dh is retired. We get things done it just seems like most days are non stop one thing to another. I get a little frazzled at times and wonder if others are in the same boat as me. I go to bed each night thinking about how much more needs to be done.

 

[Wannabefree]

My advice would be to relax a bit, and not worry so much. There will be days that go just as near perfect as possible and others that just will NOT Homeschooling is one of those things that can be very stressful and overwhelming if you take it too serious, and one of those things it's hard not to take too serious at the same time! You have to find balance, or it'll not only drive you nutty, it'll begin to affect your son the same way. Usually when we all got like that, it was around break time anyway, and a few years Spring Break came a week early on account of burnout on everyone's part. You can also split Spring Break time in half, and do half one week, and half the next in order to plan some really fun activities and "field trips" to ease the stress level. We also started doing fridays off after Spring Break if we had enough good days built up that we could allow for doing a few extra pages a day without going overboard, allowing leniency at the end of the week. MY kiddos loved 4 day a week school, and looked forward to the long weekends. We had to go, 180 days per year by state law, and we managed to throw in fun trips and short weeks here and there without much if any difference in our time we needed to be done with school for the year. Just get creative, and relax a bit sis Nothing wrong with some Science projects taking half a day, or a few extra library trips for some quiet escape in a different setting either I always complained in public school that it was boring, and wanted better for my girls, so we did everything we could to raise the fun level.

 

[SSDreamin]

Homeschooling wore me out, until I stopped trying to please extended family by making it 'just like public school' ! Once we decided to follow our own path, and make it fun and interesting, it became much less stressful for me. Now, at thirteen, DS is easy to teach. He has a master list of what he must complete in a week. He has completed that list in as little as a day, when he wanted to go with Dad (hunting camp), and at other times has been still working on it Friday night. The pace now is HIS choice. If I'm cooking, he likes to sit at the island to work, so he can get help quickly if needed. If I am outside for an extended spell, he has brought his work outside. For the most part, he is self guided, but I think he has just gotten used to staying nearby in case he gets hung up on something. Also, when DH is off during the winter, he takes over part of the teaching duties (math questions, because he's a SUPER GENIUS when it come to math, and spelling tests if I force him - he hates making up sentences ). This frees up a lot of time for me and is good for both of them, in my opinion Also, unlike some others, DS is in school all year, albeit only one day/week in summer (with several short 'vacations' during the year). DS tends to forget half of what he'd learned over summer and we spent the first month reviewing. Now, he is on pace and takes right off when we go back to a full time schedule.

 

[Corn Woman]

This won't answer your question but I just want to give kudos to those of you that home school.

 

[DeniseCharleson]

How do you schedule?

Microsoft Outlook.

 

[mrscoyote]

Thanks Corn Woman, I feel I should clarify a little. The schooling part is easy. Ds is very advanced and enjoys lessons. My problem is trying to keep life and farm chores from keeping me from ds.