A full life and a full time job...

I'm not sure where I first read that homeschooling is a full-time job, but I believe them now. It's not that I didn't believe them before, it's just that I had no frame of reference.

Consider my reference suitably framed.

The last time I was a full-time working mom, I was in my 30s with two girls, ages 12 and 16. I was out of the "trenches" of baby mothering and my girls were in public school, so that was nicely out of my hands. Of course, I still had the brunt of teenaged escapades to come (and had NO idea how hard THAT was going to be), but going to work didn't kill me. Actually, in a way, it saved me because it was an escape to a world that was just "me" without the name "mom" attached - well, most of the time.

So, after 16 years of being a working mom, I had a vague idea of what full-time work was going to be like. However. This has been different.

After teaching homeschool to my two boys for almost a full year, I can honestly say I never imagined it would be this hard. And it has taken over our lives and our home as if I did have a full-time job right in the house. Our house is not neat. It is not clean. It is held together with bubblegum and bandaids until we finish our curriculum at the end of this month and I can do emergency surgery on the bathrooms and kitchen. After being a SAHM for a decade, I never realized before how much I actually accomplished at home when they were out of the house for preschool/school/camp/etc. This year I had exactly one hour a week when they were not in my hands - when they went to homeschool PE class at the Y. I usually work out in heavenly peace while they are there, but lately I've just been in recovery mode during that time and try to just deep breath while I walk around Target or Barnes and Noble for an hour. And shop. Don't forget shopping. That definitely helps.

But as I limped out of bed this morning trying to wrap my head around the day ahead and decide which subjects we NEEDED to do today and which we SHOULD do today and which chores I would TRY to squeeze in between classes before I'm too tired to make dinner tonight...I realized I have a full-time job that I never planned on having. I knew that having two more babies in my forties AND working was impossible, so my husband and I worked it out financially so I could stay home until they were in school. HA!

Then came my autoimmune diagnosis. And my older son's ADD and PDD/NOS diagnosis. And then the recession! So now I'm working full-time anyway - for NO money - AND being a full-time SAHM to boot. Wow. How the heck did that happen?

Well, don't let anyone tell you that homeschooling isn't a job. Yes, we sleep late and go to bed at night when it suits us. Yes, we can swap history for bike-riding on a nice day and go on field trips wherever we want and always get to chaperone :). Yes, we have no evening or weekend homework/book report/science project stress from meeting someone else's deadlines. But the schoolwork gets done and the housework doesn't. And I'm dog tired and need a vacation.

Yep, this is definitely a full-time job. And come to think of it, the best one I've ever had :)

Week 33: Oh so done....

I'm done. So done. So very done. And I have 3 1/2 weeks left until the "official" end of the Homeschool year. I'm burned out, exhausted, impossibly behind on housework and paperwork and....everything. I need a break like you wouldn't believe. I don't have the will to pull myself out of bed in the morning but I still can't sleep at night. Go figure.

Other than that, things are awesome :) The boys are happy, getting along so well, and doing so well in school I can't complain at all. 

It's just me - I'm out of juice! Well, I'll keep giving the boys their work every day and we'll DO this thing until it's DONE. I'm obviously an ADD carrier to my kids because I love to start new and interesting things...and it is torture for me to finish them! So I know this can be done, and I just have to DO it. 

Where are my Nikes? :)

Week 31: The Final Countdown

Well, this is it. The final countdown to the last weeks of school. This is where I really have to pull it off. Can I finish what I started last September? Finishing things is a hard one for me...the ADD part of me loves to start new and interesting things, but finishing up those last hard parts are always a challenge! 

So...this time last year I was gearing up for becoming Midlife Homeschool Mom and now I am figuring out how to finish my first year in this new endeavor. I spent two hours tonight compiling my final 6-week curriculum calendar and let's just say...my mantra for this year should be "Best Laid Plans....". I've started each day/week/month with a great-looking calendar - and then my boys enter the picture and chaos ensues!

I'm encouraged that it looks like I'll be able to "finish" more subjects in my curriculum than I expected when I saw at mid-year that we were "behind". I began this year promising myself that I would go at my sons' speed and do what they needed, but I also realize now that if I stop for every issue Danny has, we will NEVER finish a school year, since his learning progress is so erratic and varies from day to day. 

Anyway, I need to make sure that even if Danny doesn't "get" everything we cover that I go ahead and progress so at least he's exposed to all the new information he needs. We can always review next year when we encounter paragraphs or regrouping again - it (and we) aren't going anywhere! 

Six more weeks...and then Mom will have a Summer Vacation Party!! :)

Week 29: Learning when to rest...

Homeschooling is teaching ALL of us.

One of the first things I am learning in my first year of homeschooling is that I will be learning as much as my sons do. Not only about what their needs, abilities and challenges are and not just about history and science facts that I missed my FIRST time around in school (!), but what a homeschool is and how OUR particular school works.

This week I learned that our school has a cycle of about six weeks. During those weeks, we begin with some squeaky gears the first week or so, start to really pickup steam and plow through some quality work for a few weeks...and then we hit the hard weeks. Just when I feel like we have "got" this homeschooling thing and I'm doing it "right" and they are learning so much and I am helping them just right...that's when I start to feel the cars jump the track. A bump here and there and it starts to occur to me that this is getting harder. Personally, I get emotionally burnt out and physically exhausted. I can barely get out of bed in the morning, regardless of the hour. So I down more coffee to keep alert and focused...and then sleep goes missing. By the end of this last week, I just knew I couldn't go on another day without an "off week" and I checked the calender. By George, we were completing our sixth week since the last break - Bingo! It's amazing. Like clockwork.

Now I'm working on the acceptance factor - accepting that we can't go speeding straight through the last seven weeks of class and complete an amazing amount of work before the end of the school year. It will just be enough, no more, this time.  I need to accept that next week will be a break for all of us from classwork - and we can mend some holes in the housework around here that have been overlooked while we rest our schedule. We'll do some fun outings to the zoo and go to see the Constitution and Declaration of Independence at the National Archives...and yes, these will count as school field trips, but I will relax and enjoy the day with my guys for those trips!

Today was my first day "off" and I celebrated with a total Bruno Mars "Lazy Song" day....I didn't get out of bed until 11am, then rested in the recliner until 3pm, then in my office rocking chair until now :) I did unpack a suitcase and straighten a little, but looking around my office, I think I'll be working in here for a while between blogs! I know my next lesson will be how to have a nice, relaxing and recharging summer break while getting ready for a meaner, leaner homeschool next year.  I know it will be better, because "when you know better, you do better"..... :)

Week 25: If I knew then what I know now...

Well, another week finished and 11 more weeks to go! We've been at this for over 6 months now and I feel like I'm just now getting my "sea legs". Sent my mid-year review packet to my umbrella school at the beginning of the month (I know it's late, but the school was just overwhelmed by new homeschoolers this year!) and realized I wish I had known what I know now when we started back in September.

I've finally realized that I can't do everything every day. My canned curriculum had us doing ALOT of work EVERY day and not only do my boys not do well with that schedule, I don't. I finally realized that it was most important that I do the "Three R's" every day, so without fail, we do those every day and mix up the rest. Since history is mostly reading, that gets taken care of easily with reading. We take care of science our first three days of the week and let it go at that. I plan to do the "fun" science experiments when the weather gets warmer and during the summer, like planting a garden, so I'm not sweating the labwork right now. 

The hardest thing to seem to fit in are the "fun" electives that the boys like to do but don't seem too important, so I've relegated them to after math and spelling on Fridays. Today they worked on www.codeacademy.com for their second lesson in HTML because they REALLY wanted to learn programming. Yep, they are our sons, geekiness and all :) Classes that only happen once a week or so, like handwriting, keyboarding (for Ben), art, music, etc, are harder to fit in and make sure they happen. I'm lucky during the school year that choir and cello practice give us a definite day to schedule it, but when we get to a foreign language next year, I'm sort of lost.

The boys are finally comfortable knowing that "school" will happen every day, will not be too painful and the sooner they buckle down and finish their work, the better. I've become more comfortable knowing that I don't have to do EVERYthing in the curriculum and it will still be enough. I still worry we are going to be pretty far behind when the school year is up, but I read enough from my school curriculum support posts to know that I shouldn't sweat it if it takes up to two years to finish this single year of curriculum. It won't take us nearly that long, but I feel better knowing I'm not alone and that I'll be so much more prepared this fall when we start our second year of homeschool. I can't believe it's already time to pick and buy my books and materials for next year-or that we're actually getting close to the end of our first year and planning on doing it again! 

So, if I could talk to my "first year homeschooler" Laura self at this point, I would say, "Laura, just make sure they get their 3 R's done every day. Make sure that you are there for questions, that you work with them when they get stuck and that you have a plan for today and tomorrow. The rest will be okay and will take care of itself-you are doing great!"

I wonder what next year's Laura will have to say to me? :) 

Week 21: A great week - what a surprise!

It's 1:30am on Friday night/Saturday morning and I'm still awake. But it's a good awake :) All week we've all been in bed by a decent hour (for us - I'm just happy if they're asleep so I can watch The Daily Show at 11pm lol), up by 9am and starting school by 10-10:30. We had a couple rough mornings when Danny was tired, but he would pull it together after the first class or two and we had a GREAT week!

This week, we had an unexpected day off on Tuesday when Grandpa Bill delivered the girls' old bunk beds to us for the boys. He was sweet enough to set it up for us right away in Danny's room and the boys love it. Unfortunately, they didn't feel comfortable enough sleeping in it the first night, but they've adapted and now Ben sleeps in there every other night with Danny. 

I realized how much it helps our school days when the sun actually SHINES! On dark, cold winter days, we get very little actually done, even though we trudge through the material. When the sun is out, our dining room/classroom is wonderfully sunny and we just have so much more fun, even with the dull material!

The boys seem to have recovered from the holiday schoolwork setbacks. They are back to doing "A" work in math, although I have discovered the trick to this. Each DVD lesson shows new material which the boys learn very well and are able to do in their followup lessons. Where they - usually Danny - blow their grading curve is on the multiplication problems that recur in every problem set. They are so handicapped by not knowing their math facts. Ben has problems with subtraction and regrouping and Danny freaks out with multiplying by more than a 1 digit number. So we are sort of doing a double track math class. We work on math facts and also do the daily lesson. Ben is chugging right along and may actually finish most of his math lessons by the end of the year, but Danny will be lucky to get half of lessons done - although by doing it this way, we have speeded up our progress quite a bit and I do have hope.

We have started making progress on our Science classes as well. I'm only doing one lab every other chapter or so because they seemed to be sort of redundant and not that interesting - although we did love growing the herb seeds in different environments. Very cool! We started these classes late in the year since we switched Science programs and after talking to Amy, who does more of her science in the summer, I think that's a great idea. We'll do fun experiments this summer and finish our classes later than the rest.

I'm also realizing that our Spelling program in not working very well with our class schedule. It's  not bad - the boys are actually getting alot of good handwriting practice out of it and we are learning some spelling rules, but it doesn't seem relevant to our other lessons and we have to spell 25 words a day - with which my boys and their goofing off takes 30 minutes some days, which we just can't spare on a spelling class. So I'll search for something that works better.

So...reading, writing and 'rithmetic has been  my internal mantra chant lately. If I get concerned I'm missing something each day, I just make sure we do these three things and I feel like I'm doing what's important. Danny actually used a writing organizer to write a rough draft and did a good job. Of course, we have major revisions and editing to do, but the important thing is HE DID IT! He used our new Essentials in Writing DVD lessons to walk him through the steps and I'm more optimistic every day that he can do this. Of course, his writing will be very "Him" and will not be what a "regular" school would probably like, but if he's writing correct content and can learn to edit his own writing for grammar, punctuation and spelling, then THAT is what matters. 

And Ben is beginning to learn how to read on his own without me over his shoulder. In fact, I think he reads better when I'm not around. This time when we started our newest readers on George Washington, I left all the reading entirely up to the boys themselves. I also had the boys write a sentence about each chapter after they read it, and when they are done I'm going to have them write a full report using their notes. And I've looked at their notes and they're doing a great job!

Along with our fun spur-of-the-moment trip to Benjamin Banneker's home on Thursday and an end-of-the-schoolday trip to the library for a Lego Build day on Friday, we covered all our subjects and all of our objectives except for daily spelling. A spectacular success of a week that I wish I could duplicate every day. Ah, I could only hope :) But for now, I will revel in the glow of success, of the feeling of a job well done, of a week of well-rested and happy children - and a quiet but sweet Valentine's Day in the middle of it all.

Homeschool is wonderful. I can't imagine my life without it again :) 

Week 20: Halfway there!

Well, we are officially in our 20th week of homeschool, which means we are halfway through our first school year! Although we've been slogging at this for 20 weeks, we're only at around day 70 of actually book time, because we work on a four-day school week and we've had a few breaks. Which is actually what I'm ready for right now - a break.

I know we've only been schooling since the holidays for five weeks, but it feels like forever. I'm so exhausted - my health is just in the pits again right now and by 5pm tonight, I was in bed again. We are doing well on schoolwork and I'm actually feeling good about the progress we're making, but still tweaking how to do it - especially when my health isn't cooperating. Today we had "sofa school" - with me reading and working with the boys on math, writing and history while resting in my recliner. It wasn't the best, but it was okay. It sure made me realize that poor Benjamin doesn't really know what a verb is! How did he get through  2nd grade and half of this 3rd grade year without getting that?! Here's where I bring things to a screeching halt, find what my baby needs and work on this now.

I'm finding we're not going to finish all the curricula by the end of the year. I'm going to have to say "tough noogies", because that's what it takes. The boys know their multiplication tables better now than ever, but still not all of it. Ben doesn't know what a verb is and Danny still writes from the bottom and right. But we ARE ahead of where we started in September - and our family is happier and stronger than ever. 

Halfway there ain't halfway bad :)