The Dark Side to Home Schooling

Sometimes I feel like I glamorize home schooling in my own head and to other people. The truth is that like everything else some days are really hard. It takes a little more organization and a little more thought in a day. It takes a lot more patience than sometimes I have. To me it means letting some things go with an "oh well" which is hard.

We all know there are only so many hours in a day. So, if I am choosing to spend an hour or two with my kindergartner exclusively (usually means during nap time for my toddler) I have to give up my prime no interruptions time. When I do that things like mopping my floor get put off. I have come to miss my no interruptions time.

Also, because our schedule is so flexible, it leads to a hard time being consistent with lessons at a certain time each day (my fault). Then S thinks he can weasle his way out of lessons. "No, I don't want to do reading." or "After I finish this, Mom." It's really a work-in-progress. I'm learning more about how to keep my home running and take care of the schooling needs of my children. I'm tired of Babe coming home from work to a messy house and a tired wife who has no idea what she is going to make for dinner! Really, it could be resolved on my part with more planning, but the times that I used to plan menus and shopping lists (nap time) is now rerouted to schooling.

Then there's the fact that S begs to go to school. He actually told someone the other day that he was home schooling because his mom wasn't ready for him to leave the house. Some days that is completely true. I love seeing him play with his brothers and I love him being here with us during the day. Some days it's not true and I'm ready to ship him off to school for those seven hours a day, five days a week with a kiss, a lunchbox and a sigh of relief.

As I work out the kinks, I'll try to post about things that I'm doing to keep us on track. Like these:

• I try to clear the table from dinner and set his spelling book out ready for him to do a quick five or ten minutes of spelling before breakfast.
• Then at breakfast we work on our memorization. 
• In the car we count up to twenty and then count by tens to one-hundred. Now we are up to counting to one hundrend and counting by tens to two hundred.
• Sometimes before we start lessons requiring some sitting and focus, we do a child's exercise song to get us all moving. Their favorite is a dragon one that you shake your dragon tail, flap your dragon wings (jumping jacks), kick and roar like a dragon. They get a kick out of being silly and it's been a great way to spend a little time with ALL of them before I have to sit down with one and do a quick lesson.