One of the best pieces of homeschooling advice I received came from a reader friend, Peggy, who said that I should strive to ‘work myself out of a job'. So this summer we've been doing what some call, “homeschool lite”. For us it means this: the kids wake up in the morning and have a list, which I work on every Friday for the following week, and they know they have to get up and do the following:
- One or two chores (chores that Kent or I would normally have to do!)
- Pick up around the house
- Go through one math lesson (Teaching Textbooks is working out great! I dare say the kids even like their math sometimes!)
- Read for half an hour (this often gets pushed to bedtime)
- Brush their teeth (yes, I really do have to put that on a list)
- Take their cod liver oil
And then they're done for the day. Most days they can do all of that in about an hour.
Not only is this making less work for me so I can get other stuff done, and it's good for them to learn these life skills, but it's also getting them into the routine of waking up and checking the list, so they'll know what to do come fall when there will be more on the list each day.
Do you know what the best sound in the world is?
The best sound is waking up to hear the washer and dishwasher going, and I didn't do it! 🙂 Even better is when the kids pop in for some snuggles and tell me, “Mom, I got 100% on my math again!”
Do you want to hear how awesome my hubs is?
Thanks to many of you, we've had some great reading suggestions to help us figure out the rest of our fall curriculum (I'm almost there!). But there's one problem. I don't have time to read them all. So Kent is helping me by reading through all of them (just skimming some) and giving me a synopsis. I can't tell you how much this means to me. First, just because it is so helpful, but also, because it shows how much he's getting into the homeschooling thing, especially since he was a hard sell at first. Not as hard a sell as some husbands, no, but he surely thought I'd lost it when it first came up. Now I think he's just as excited about it as I am. I'm very thankful. 🙂
Here's the one he's reading now: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.
One thing that's still tricky…
I still can't figure out how to get all of my full-time work done (blogging and RFM ad selling), but that's probably how I'll always be, because I try to do too much in each day. So I stay up late to work, and then sleep in as long as the kids let me in the morning. I'm trying to learn the never-ending lesson of enjoying each moment, even though my list will never be DONE. If anyone has a tip for HOW to do this, to just ‘let things go' even though your to-do list is always a mile long, I'd love to hear it. I've gotten much better, but it's a constant struggle. Thank you for always being so willing to share your advice with me.
Ellen says
Hi Kelly,
I know this will sound contrary to finding more time to do things, but if you haven’t already added daily Mass to your schedule it is actually the best thing to do get more done. But more importantly it teaches your children correct order: that God is most important.
God bless your homeschool.
KitchenKop says
Thanks Ellen!
We are planning to go to a weekday mass once a week right now. If I try to do more often, then that means I’d get too few hours of sleep too many nights in a row. I’d love to do more, but working full time *and* homeschooling means working until very late at night. I’m just trying to keep myself from getting burned out and trying to do too much.
Kelly
Shannon Rop says
Have you heard of Flylady? She’s an organizational guru for keeping a clean house. She sends out daily reminder lists for things, so you can think about what needs to be done….like dinner and laundry. Her laundry mantra is “A load a day keeps chaos away.” Also, we’ve recently changed the way we do chores…instead of each child having a separate list, we all (including mom and dad) do chores together at dinner time. This way has been working much better for us. No more “I’m not picking that up because it’s not my room to clean” kinda attitude.
Jill says
Kelly,
I just cam e acrosss your site last week (don’t remember how, something to do with food!) and what caught my eye was that you were from OLC and I live in GR. We have homeschooled six children ,our youngest is 15 and the others are in various stages of: just starting college,graduating from college,almost done with college,married with kids -working fulltime and working toward BS degree. We homeschooled all the way from K-Highschool graduation.We have used Seton (very briefly),Mother of Divine Grace(mostly),Kolbe,Angelicum,Eclectic, Saxon,Teaching Textbooks,Math U See,Didache, Fr. Laux , Appologia Science,Greenleaf guides and so many others along the past twenty years.With five boys we have participated in Homeschooling basketball,soccer and homeschooling band which is fantastic and highly recommended. Our oldest son married someone he met in the Homeschooling band who converted to Catholicism. If you have questions about a curriculum we have probably used it.
In a nutshell here are my best recommendations:
Classical curriclum if you want to really want your kids to love and understand and apreciate the beauty of their Catholic faith.
Syllabi are lifesavers!
They provide structure
They allow kids to work independently and have the satisfaction of seeing their progress
Tey provide a basic framework and a logical progression of study for the inexperienced and busy or ADD mom
They give you peace of mind that you are covering whay’s important and not just what you feel like doing
They do the planning for you and free you from lots of stress
Remember always that we are training our children for heaven first,not Harvard.We were not perfect parents or educators but our hearts were in the right place.As parents we are the primary educators of our children and we took that vocation seriously.By using a Catholic curriculum I learned so much about my Faith that I never learned in Catholic gradeschool or highschool, and now I watch my adult children continue to live out their faith in a world that is often hostile to it. It helps you to see what is really important in the long run.Don’t sweat too much over the right curriculum,pick a good Catholic one that you like and stick with it and provide the example of a good marriage where your children feel secure and loved , live out your faith daily, don’t isolate yourself from others, teens especially need likeminded friends and my 15 year old loves his homeschooled friends from band and coop and that makes him satisfied to continue school at home because his siblings are all moved out.
If you need any advice or suggestions I’d be glad to share the good and the bad!
KitchenKop says
Hi Jill!
This made me so envious: “We homeschooled all the way from K-Highschool graduation.” How I wish I’d have been in the right place to do this when our oldest was first going off to Kindergarten!!!!! But I just wasn’t, so I know I have to let go of that and do the best I can now.
I also wish that because our kids would have had homeschool friends from the get-go. As it is now, though, our 8th grader is all concerned (understandably so) about leaving his friends behind. I’m hoping that Koinonia will help get him into a group of friends, especially since we’re not doing the homeschool band now (I’m sad about this, it’s a long story).
I’ll definitely keep you in mind when I have questions, thanks for reaching out! 🙂
Kelly
Audry says
One of the things I did learn about housekeeping and homeschooling is that I don’t have to do the whole house in one day. I usually do the toilets, but I might just do one a day (we have way too many). The trash doesn’t get emptied all at the same time. Sheets don’t get changed at the same time. That one is good then my laundry doesn’t get overloaded with sheets.
Chores for the kids is always great. Unless they are so busy with school, that I do some of the work for them. But usually, my 11 year old goes out to take care of the farm aniamls and pets in the morings. My 8 year old can empty the dishwasher. My 15 year old can vacuum. My 4 year old can get the hampers and sort in the laundry room. That’s alot of work that I didn’t have to do. The other thing that helps me is since we cook so much, I’m always in the kitchen. They need to be near me so I can hear them call for help or give them a spelling test. Our dining room is so close and the walls in such a position that it is the best place for them to do school. If I had my ultimate desire they would be in the kitchen at a bar so I could better hear and watch over them. I don’t have that but it works really well now.
My 15 year old is going to be a junior in high school. She doesn’t like the noise from us so she goes to her room. She is able to do her work in quiet and get it done. That works for me too.
Sometimes we just have to figure out with trial and error what is best for our family.
My 8 year old hates leftovers so I don’t ask her to clean off dirty dishes or give leftovers to the chickens. But she doesn’t mind cleaning toilets. Go figure. My son hates to vacuum but doesn’t mind being the first one up to go tend to the animals or handle leftovers. My 15 year old doesn’t mind vacuuming or killing chickens or disposing of dead animals.
We’ll still trying to teach the 4 year old how to do chores. Sometimes she still says she’s too little.
The older three know how to do dishes and wash and dry clothes. They’re not great at hanging up clothes, but that just means we have to iron the nice ones later. I don’t put up their clothes. I’ll either leave it on their beds or put it in the crate for them to put up later. I used to fold them but after I saw how they put them up, I dont’ fold them anymore either. I do fold my husband and mine and hang those properly. I have gotten the children to do it in a pinch but I usually have to go looking for clothes later because they put them in the wrong place.
Once I learned, after many tears, that some things a child/person just doesn’t like that job, then it made it easier to assign them jobs. We only have 4 chldren so we don’t do chore charts. I do my best to make it fair and spread out among the 4 of them and me. My husband gets out of all that because he’s goes work and works hard. We try to have the living room clean and supper close when he gets home.
We don’t have a lot of extra time doing the school year, so I bought my 8 year old and 11 year old the map skills from catholic heritage curricula to do during the summer. They like it very much and were so excited. It’s not school. It’s just fun. I also bought them some saint books and the Bush Boys Adventure Series. My 11 year old boy has started reading the Bush Boys. I figure that goes well with the map skills.
May God bless you in this high calling it is worth the effort and the suffering.
Another Catholic homeschooling fun is visiting Cathedrals or beautiful Catholic Churches. Or you could attend a Traditional Latin Mass (the Pope calls it the Extraordinary Form.) It is most reverent and beautiful.
We now go regularly the Extraordinary Form and my 11 year old serves and responds in Latin. How great is that!
KitchenKop says
Thank you so much for all that great advice (and all of you who have commented, some who I responded to individually), I especially love the idea to visit different cathedrals around town for Mass, that can be a field trip, and if I call it “exploring” the kids will really love it. After we’ve learned some Latin, I’ll have to find where there’s a Latin Mass, cool!!!
Kel
Peggy says
😀
I used to keep a poster board in the “school room” which doubles as my office. I divided the board into fourths and labeled the four sections: Today, this week, in the next four weeks, eventually. I put individual jobs on tiny sticky notes. (I used three colors of stickies too, for top, medium and low priority.) As things became more or less important I’d move the stickies from one box to another. That pretty much kept me from spending time TODAY on something I didn’t need to do until next week.
Oh…and ALWAYS write “make a list” as the first item of any list you make. Nothing succeeds like the success of crossing that first item off!! 😉
Kristia {Family Balance Sheet} says
I don’t have any advice for you about getting your work done while homeschooling, but maybe you could reach out to some other bloggers who do it and pick their brains, such as Toni @ happy housewife, Jessica @ life as mom or Mandi @ life your way. They probably have blog posts about the topic too.
Toni says
Prioritize your to-do list. Stick to it. There are some things that ought to be done each day, some things that have to be done once a week or once a month, and some that are large, once and done. If you can only maintain the daily’s and it is a priority to maintain, keeping up to date, then accept that limitation. If there is a certain amount of time each day that is free after the daily necessaries are done, block off that time and insert ONE activity that is not daily but high priority. Here’s the important part: don’t take up another project until the first one is finished. Yes, it can be done. I got this plan from the biography of a top business exec who paid a member of his staff thousands of dollars to come up with the best plan to organize his business. The answer which earned the reward was: finish what you start before you start something new. I didn’t think it could work in homemaking, homesteading, and homeschooling, (and it is true that there are no dishes to wash, meals to cook, and laundry to do in a business) but I have found it to work very well for me, helps me not be distracted into too many side activities, and has given me success and mental stability I didn’t have in days past. Hope it helps you.
Catherine says
I’m still learning to forgive myself for not getting everything done.
I hate the apologies I keep feeling I have to give out when the house isn’t as I’d have liked it to be, but there are only so many hours in a day, so many hands to do the work, and no left over money to employ workers to do the gardening, cleaning, etc. for you.
I just try to prioritise the jobs, and get a buzz out of finding 15mins here and there to finish off some tasks.
Teaching the children to take over some responsibilities is a HUGE time saver, too … once you’ve invested some time teaching them in the first place. I love how most of the washing is done by them now!
Adrienne @ Whole New Mom says
From someone w/ endless to do lists……I don’t know. I am thinking we need to cut things out. Gotta pair of scissors we can share???
Heather says
That’s always been my Dad’s one-sentence job description for being a parent: “You have 18 years to work yourself out of a job”