Changes

For the first time ever, I planned out our homeschooling schedule. I've been using the Homeschool Tracker for a while to capture attendance records. In the past I've had great intentions at the beginning of the year to plug in each and every activity for record keeping. But we never accomplished as much as I planned and it turned out to be a whole lot of work for me, with little benefit.

This year, though, we were faced with several time challenges. Our goals include finishing The Story of the World as our history overview for Large and Medium so they can focus on particularly interesting episodes and get into further details. They also wanted to try a more structured science program and chose Life Science from Plato learning. They want to continue reading literature together, perfect their cursive, learn to write articles and papers, build their vocabulary and progress in their math. Small, of course, wants to become a more confident reader, absorb the world around him and have fun.

With all our activities, dance and piano classes, homeschool group meetings and Roots&Shoots, it's hard to fit everything in. All three kids have a paying gig as dog walkers, Large has five hours of dance a week, Medium has three hours of dance, girl scouts and piano. Small has on hour of dance and piano.

Add to the mix my volunteer work with the wonderful InHome Conference, teaching science lab, facilitating Roots&Shoots, helping new homeschoolers find their way in our Westside House group and my need to earn significant money to pay for all this, and you get an idea of my sense of panic.

One final complication is that our login to Plato, made affordable through the Homeschool Buyers Co-Op, is active between the hours of 1 and 4 only. So, I carefully mapped the time we each could spend on each activity, overlapping where necessary, separating the kids when needed and put the schedules on nice colorful charts on the wall. It's been working for a couple days now, with some adjustments we might do OK. Most of all, the kids seem to have more play and daydream time now.

I, on the other hand, have no time. I can fit my conference work in when there is a computer free and if I can have access to my files. Our great idea is to sell books on Amazon, initially from our own stock and later from thrifting. This can be a good way to earn money, but I just don't know where I'm going to squeeze in trips to thrift stores and library sales, to the post office for shipping and computer time to track orders. I guess I'll know it when I see it.