Home Management
As in any normal homeschooling family, your situation, setting, and needs will be unique. Prioritizing will be a constant work in progress. Maintaining your house will be a challenge unless you hire cleaning services, or adopt a minimalist lifestyle (I’m personally aiming in putting into practice the latter one). It is highly productive to set a time aside to brainstorm a house maintenance schedule to fit into your daily routine. Implementing just a couple of things per day would help in maintaining. For example, one load of laundry and cleaning one bathroom on Monday, one load of laundry and quick-cleaning one bathroom on Tuesday, groceries on Wednesday, etc. If their ages are appropriate, implement a daily chore schedule for your children so that your personal load of work is lighter.
Co-ops and Extracurricular Activities
If you are considering participating in a co-op, be mindful and evaluate if the courses offered will be of benefit for your children’s learning. You also have to take into consideration that co-ops are managed by homeschooling parents and you will most likely be required to participate in one way or another. Also be selective of which extracurricular activities to commit to for your kids, as you will have limited time. Just registering them for gymnastics will take a big commitment and will probably be the only thing you will be able to take them to.
Curricula Resources
Select curricula resources that are easy to follow, for example, you can benefit from a ‘boxed curriculum’ where lesson plans are already included and you just have to plan to acquire materials needed for projects, experiments, etc. ahead of time. Don’t feel obligated to complete every single activity, project, and/or experiment suggested in the lesson plans. They usually have a list of extra activities to enhance learning; just choose the ones that you deem important in impacting your children and that they would really enjoy working on. If you are an experienced homeschooler and you prefer to create your own lessons, give yourself at least a week to plan at least a semester in advance.
When possible, plan experiments, crafts, and activities ahead of time and have materials ready to just perform. This will keep you from wasting time; for example, the day of teaching Ancient Egypt and you are making History Pockets and need a few copies from the activity book or realizing that you need 12×18 construction paper. Planning in advance will have you valuable learning time and teaching momentum.
Year-Round vs. Traditional Schedule
Homeschooling year-round is advisable (from personal experience). It will take stress and pressure off of you and you can take off as needed for a day or two – when sickness visits or when you plan a vacation. You can also apply more emphasis on some seasons more than others, for example you may want to do a lighter workload during the summers so that your children can have some free time to play with friends that are off from school.
Contentment
You will notice, especially through social media, that fellow homeschooling moms participate and include their children in all the field trips and extracurricular activities they can find. Please, please do not compare yourself to these fellow moms. Comparison tends to nest feelings of inadequacy and guilt. You have to keep in mind that your situation is unique and you are working with what you have and that what you are doing will be the best you can give to your children. Keep it simple and do try to “spice it up” every now and then.
Make sure you also find a stress outlet for yourself. Whether that is reading a book, or a scheduled date with your hubby, but something that you will enjoy. I recently found a deep interest for decorative planning and journaling. I’m able to sit once a week and decorate my planner as I plan the activities for the week. It gives me so much joy. Find your joy and together with a continuous relationship with God by doing morning devotionals, Bible study, and prayer, will make your life as a busy, working, homeschooling mom easier to handle.
Maritza is a homeschooling mom to three little blessings and a full time Medical Laboratory Scientist. When she’s not home educating her children, working, or maintaining her home, she will be found planning, reading, and attempting to become a writer by encouraging fellow busy working, homeschooling moms at Homeschool Epiphany.
Such a timely post for me. I’m in the throws of preparing for our 2nd homeschooling year (to my 8th grade son) while working 40 hours a week outside the home. Blessings!