This week is all about preventing and solving problems. I LOVE the posts my fellow bloggers are linking up. I can’t include them all, so be sure to check them out on the site if you’re reading via email.
If you haven’t been online much the past few weeks, you may not know much about the Common Core. These YouTube videos are a great place to start. But I love this post from 7 Sisters Homeschool that encourages us to keep it in proper perspective.
I’ll admit it. I’ve believed that if I just planned the perfect homeschool schedule, I’d be a perfect homeschool mom. Heather Bowen of Upside Down Homeschooling turns that idea, well upside down!
Speaking of scheduling…when you’re doing any kind of work other than homeschooling, that’s a challenge, isn’t it? Jamerrill Stewart, a gracious and very busy WAHM, shares her story.
All this busyness in our day may lead to forgetting one very important person: our husbands. As a psychologist, I can’t stress the importance of marriage maintenance enough. Women Abiding shares these words of wisdom.
I did my doctoral research by driving to libraries, lugging heavy journals up and down floors, and making hundreds of photocopies. What a blessing that our kids don’t have to research this way. The National Digital Public Library is a new resource that makes studying anything easier.
Now it’s your turn! What’s hot in your homeschool this week? Please use my blog button (bottom right) or link to this post. Visit the link before you if you can and say thanks.
Home educators have a lot of demands on their time. We may have multiple children, some of whom are babies or toddlers who require extra care. Some of our children may be teens who aren’t yet driving, yet are involved in numerous outside classes or activities. Then there are homeschooling parents who have a home-based businesses or work outside the home. We want to teach our children well, but we wonder:
Is there a way of providing a quality education in less time?
Some homeschoolers think so. The idea is that you teach the essential material in just one hour a day, leaving the rest of the time for the children to do independent work, related assignments, or pursue their own interests in an unschooling approach.
What Would an Hour a Day Homeschool Look Like?
Teach one subject or do memory work for six subjects, ten minutes each
Teach four subjects (math, language arts, Bible, read aloud) for four subjects, fifteen minutes each
Teach two subjects (math, language arts) for thirty minutes each; these could be switched out daily
Teach one subject for an hour each day on a rotation
Teach an hour for older students and an hour for youngers
Teach for more than one hour using any combination above
Teach this way when you’re pressed for time
I have used the latter approach many, many times. A repair person comes, the phone rings, I have to pick someone up from the airport–you name it–and the time I have left for teaching is down to an hour. I often use the ten-minute per subject approach. Most of the time I teach for three hours using a combination of approaches. I have six children, some of whom require more intensive instruction in reading. As they mature, less of my time will be required.
But Don’t Students Need More of Your Time?
Yes, they often do. That’s why every teacher who uses this method must make themselves available to tutor and answer questions. You may be spending only an hour of focused time “teaching” your students, but they will be spending many hours relying on your tutoring and learning on their own.
Want More Information About Homeschooling in an Hour?
Check out Homeschooling-Ideas and Homeschool.com that reference a father whose six children were homeschooled in an hour a day and attended Stanford. He notes that he used this approach with older children.
You can cover many of the essentials in LESS than an hour a day with Classical Conversations.
What Do You Think? Could You Homeschool in an Hour a Day?
A key to successful homeschooling is managing how you spend your time. After twelve years of teaching my children at home, I am still working to better manage my time.
I began using Managers of Their Homes years ago which enabled me to think of time in terms of half-hour increments. This scheduling approach also helped me to see that every subject and activity didn’t have to be done every day. I still have a schedule that I follow loosely as follows:
6:00 a.m. Up and workout while listening to sermons on iPhone
7:00 a.m. Devotional time
7:30 a.m. Set out breakfast and get kids up while I shower
8:00 a.m. Family devotions; morning chores
8:30 a.m. School time
12:00 p.m. Lunch and break
1:00 – 3:00 p.m. School subjects not completed; outside classes; mom’s to do’s; weekly chores
3:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Snack and continue with previous
5:00 p.m. Dinner preparation
6:00 p.m. Dinner
7:00 p.m. Evening chores and family time
9:00 p.m. Bedtime routines
10:00 p.m. Reading, time with husband
11:00 p.m. Lights out
The foregoing is our schedule on a VERY good day. We tend to be night owls here, so if we don’t get to bed on time, everything is pushed back in the morning. I have found that I resist regimented schedules and that routines work even better for me. I began establishing good routines years ago when I started getting FLYLady‘s emails. Today I use the well-designed HomeRoutines app on my iPhone. It helps me tremendously to have a reminder of all the subjects I want to teach. My goal, though, is not to complete every single step of every routine I have. If it were, I would be disappointed every day. My goal is to get an A for the day and to get most (90%) of those routines completed on most days.
I have also had periods in my homeschooling when I didn’t have much of a schedule. One advantage was not feeling obligated, but free to enjoy teaching. Another was that I was better able to work around my work-at-home husband’s more spontaneous style. A disadvantage was making less progress in important subjects, and finding myself spending too much time online.
As you determine the scheduling approach that will work best for you and your family, consider what you believe about time in general. After reading this excellent article on a Christian approach to time management, I was motivated to ask myself some important questions about how I am spending my time–schooling or otherwise. The article advises tracking how you spend your time. After having done this numerous times on paper and via a variety of iPhone apps, I already know how I spend my time. I quickly made a list of all my activities. Then I answered these questions for each of them:
“What would happen if this were not done at all?” And if the answer is, “Nothing would happen,” then obviously the conclusion is to stop doing it.
Which of the activities on my time log could be done by someone else just as well, if not better?
What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?
The answers were very revealing. Now I will explain why I have a picture of Dr. Phil at the top of this post. Were you wondering? Dr. Phil, in discussing dysfunctional behaviors with guests, is fond of asking, “How’s that workin’ for ya?” I understand what he’s getting at. He is trying to help people recognize that they are experiencing negative effects of bad choices. But here’s the problem with that question. If you have to ask the question, it must still be working for them. They’re still getting something out of overeating, the procrastination, and the refusal to communicate or they wouldn’t keep doing it.
You may still be confused. The last question I asked myself about each activity I invest time in really brought me up short. “What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?” This question was obviously designed for people in a traditional workplace. But as homeschoolers, we don’t have bosses or administrations. Or do we? I realized that all that I have, including my children and my time, are God’s. He has given me the job of educating His children. I had to answer the difficult question of what I am doing to waste His time without contributing to His overall effectiveness. It became clear to me that I couldn’t figure out a good schedule for our homeschool without reflecting on God’s goals for my children.
Here’s the connection. I might think that web surfing for hours while my children play video games is workin’ just fine for me, but there is no way I can think it’s workin’ well for His purposes for me and my family. As you seek to create or recreate your homeschool schedule, pray about how God would use your family to increase His effectiveness.
He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, (2 Tim. 1:9)
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
