How Do You Find the Time to Homeschool? Start Early and Wing It!!!

I had a friend ask the other day how we fit everything into our schedule. Specifically she wanted to know how we fit our official school time in. Now most of you may think that should be easy and think that because we homeschool we should have plenty of time. But anyone who homeschools knows that is not true. Between co-op classes, field trips, music lessons, and well life in general it can be a challenge to find four hours a day to sit down and do school. My answer to her consisted of mainly we get up early and I go to bed late and we wing it. Yep I don't really have a magic schedule or anything I just do not sleep a lot. When I first started homeschooling my favorite part was that we didn't have to start early. We would start our day out slow and do school around 11. Those days are long gone, we simply have too much other stuff going on. So most mornings I am up by 6 and we start school no later then 8:00. Sometimes if the kids are up at 6 we will go ahead and get started then.

Here is a general run down of our week (I am not going to write out all the basic stuff like meals, grocery shopping, household chores, etc because those just get down when they can). I also have a really fun part time job that I work at a few hours a day around 3 days a week.

Sunday- This is my planning day. I spend a couple of hours each Sunday getting all of our school stuff ready for the week. Everything gets printed, our days get sort of planned, I update their attendance and grades on the computer, all of that fun stuff!!

Monday- This is our “serious” day, if we do not get started off right on Monday then our whole week is shot. We work hard the first few days of the week because the end of the week tends to get kind of crazy lol. Yesterday I was sick (I have been sick for a few days) which means we didn't do school, I didn't even do my planning on Sunday. Combine that with the fact that the oldest is out of school for snow days and we can pretty much just go ahead and call this school week a bust. We will do school but it will not be the amount we normally do and that is okay.

Tuesday- Another serious day. We focus on school work the majority of the day.

Wednesday- Serous again lol….time to get that school work done. The boys also have church on Wednesday evenings.

Thursday- “Hell day”, Thursdays are insane, we have to start school super early to fit it in. We usually do not accomplish as much school this day as we do Monday-Wednesday. At noon Keaton has piano, at 4 the middles have guitar and at 6:30 they all have gymnastics. Thursday is usually the day I schedule the miscellaneous extra stuff also. For example last Thursday Keaton had a eye appointment and this Thursday Axton has a well check. Plus Big Bang Theory comes on at 8 and since our whole family is obsessed that has to be part of the schedule:-)

Friday- Field trip day, I try to schedule the majority of our field trips on Friday. We used to never do school on Fridays but now that I have added more stuff into our week we try to get some school in on Fridays.

Saturdays- Family day, work day and make up day:-)

Now through the month we will of course have stuff that messes with our weekly schedule. The first Monday and Thursday and the last Wednesday of each month we have our homeschool co-op. I teach afternoon art classes at my job about 3 times a week. We will have some field trips and extra events like school holiday parties that pop up on days besides Friday. How do I handle all of that?? I wing it. I am not an organized person. So I wing it a lot;-) I usually spend my early mornings catching up on my blog, field trip planning, working on a couple of at home businesses I have (Young LivingEssential Oils, Cakes by A, and Arbonne). If I don't get to all of that in the mornings then I will do it at 2 a.m., like I said just wing it.