In This Chapter
Accommodating younger travelers
Keeping house and sanity as you homeschool
Time and resource management
Simple starting points
Resources
In This Chapter
Accommodating younger travelers
Keeping house and sanity as you homeschool
Time and resource management
Simple starting points
Resources
HOME EDUCATION CREATES conflicting demands. As you discuss writing or math with your teen, younger siblings clamor for attention. Educational projects fill every corner, homes get messy, and household chores increase. And there’s more. Teenagers, with their many activities, require transportation more often than younger children. In addition, teens need guidance to manage their days. Planning and scheduling take time from history and science. Demands on the primary teacher or facilitator do not end there. Husbands need time with their wives—away from children. Finally, many homeschool parents say they need time alone.
Certainly the primary teacher has responsibilities beyond academics that threaten to overwhelm the most capable among us. Almost all homeschooling parents admit struggling with these issues. Our survey respondents, in the midst of their journeys, talk candidly about the challenges and suggest interesting solutions.
TODDLERS AND EARLY- AND MIDDLE-YEARS children want to join anything interesting happening in the house. Curiosity about the teen and adult world drives their learning, and you will not want to discourage it. At the same time, you need individual time with your thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds to tackle difficult academics, discuss mature topics, and work on complicated projects. Here we offer effective coping techniques. On a related tangent, our survey respondents also discuss how the homeschooling experience differs for oldest, middle, and youngest children.
Some families handle younger siblings by including them in activities. Others prefer diversions, such as Legos and videos. In some instances, inclusion is the diversion.
Marta, mother of seven girls ages two to seventeen, describes her bag of tricks. “I sometimes give our younger children their own work to do in parallel to what the older ones are doing. For example, they have coloring books and workbooks that they use while the older ones are doing written work. I have educational computer games aimed specifically at our younger children. They play while I teach. I also have a French cartoon teaching video for the little ones. They watch this every day, so that they become comfortable with simple phrases and conversations in French. This gives me a half-hour to work with one of the older girls without interruptions.”
Here are some ways homeschooling parents occupy younger siblings while they work with older ones:
Give younger children their own workbooks, pencils, crayons
Do “school” with younger siblings first
Let the younger ones listen
Legos, blocks, and cuisenaire rods
Books with tapes
Story tapes
Friends to visit
Chores
Nap
Playing with water in the sink
Videos
Computer games
Puzzles
Play-Doh
Claudia has homeschooled her four boys, now ages nine to eighteen, since 1986. She maintains her younger children’s interest in workbooks and other materials by restricting access. “We keep certain books, paper, and other supplies for younger children separate from other toys, available only when we want to do something with the older children. The younger siblings see these items as their special homeschooling things.”
Several of our survey respondents mentioned adjusting curriculum to accommodate younger learners. Many use unit studies, sometimes in conjunction with other techniques. Molly, mother of five children ages eight months to fourteen years, writes, “I have always devised units around what my oldest is studying. I fit the younger ones into that framework. We will all do biology this year. The two oldest will dissect while my five-year-old daughter observes and eventually leaves to play. Our three-year-old son will be off riding tractors with Dad, and I hope the baby will nap. I have trained my younger ones not to interrupt—not very often anyway! We have a big house, and that helps spread folks out. I am a firm believer in extra chores for children who cannot happily occupy themselves.”
First, homeschooling parents need not think of themselves as The Entertainment Committee.
Molly makes two good points. First, homeschooling parents need not think of themselves as The Entertainment Committee.
This applies to younger children as well as teenagers. There is nothing wrong with learning to deal with boredom by creating your own entertainment. Many children, occupied with full-time school and activities, never get that chance until they reach adulthood. Homeschoolers learn this valuable lesson early. Second, except for babies and toddlers, children of all ages can be taught to respect the time of everyone in the home. Even a three-year-old can learn when not to interrupt.
Amy, with four children ages ten to nineteen, schedules activities interesting and educational to all ages—in her words, “activities that can be absorbed on many levels.” Examples are reading aloud, watching educational videos, and going on field trips. Building on this idea, consider introducing some subjects that younger children can learn as fast or faster than their older siblings can. These include music, foreign languages, and games like chess.
Ryan, age twenty-five and a former homeschooler, is the oldest of four sons of a close friend. Watching his parents’ relaxed relationship with his younger teenage brothers, he wryly calls himself “the experimental model.” According to our survey respondents, he hits the nail on the head.
Birth order affects the homeschooling experience. Mira explains, “Our first child definitely had more attention from us in the beginning and had to suffer as we developed our educational philosophy. Our second did not get as much attention but had the benefit of a very relaxed educational style customized to him from the beginning.” Susanna recounts a similar experience. “My firstborn son has had to endure my exploring and finding the correct curriculums for him. My daughter has had medical problems that have delayed her, yet I have easily found appropriate curriculum for her.”
Consider introducing some subjects that younger children can learn as fast or faster than their older siblings can. These include music, foreign languages, and games like chess.
No doubt about it. Parents become better home educators with experience. During their journey, they learn how to evaluate resources and choose appropriate community activities. Then, as they focus on their younger children, they operate with confidence, not from fear. Typically, older children bear the brunt of experimentation. They also shoulder the unstated yet always-present responsibility for proving the success of home education to doubting friends and relatives.
Nevertheless, oldest children have some advantages. With higher parental expectations, a greater percentage of older children excel academically. In addition, older children seem to mature more quickly, probably because they assume responsibilities that youngest children never have, such as child care or even teaching.
Younger children benefit from their parents’ experience with older siblings. In addition, many mothers say that younger children often learn by osmosis, just by listening to a lesson or discussion many deem too difficult for them to understand. Marta says, “The younger ones benefit the most since they observe and soak up all the things the older ones do.” At the same time, younger siblings usually feel less pressure to achieve and perform.
Some say that reduced expectations can lead to mediocre performance. Others counter that expectations are not reduced, just different. Emma writes, “We learned with our older children that everything works out in the end. Our new expectations center not so much around specific skills as around developing a work ethic and pursuing interests in depth.”
AS A HOMESCHOOLING parent, you wear many hats. First come the parent and teacher hats. Then you don administrator, house-cleaner, scheduler, organizer, nurse, chauffeur, cook, and chief bottle-washer hats, often all in the same day. Before you know it, you look and feel like a character in a Dr. Seuss book—smiley, animated, and confused, all at the same time. Bring yourself back to reality with the comments of experienced travelers.
Our survey respondents divided equally on whether homeschooling makes housekeeping easier or more difficult. Karleen finds it easier. “If they were in school, then I would also be working full time. This way, I get my chores done whenever I have a chance throughout the day. Plus I expect our teenagers to do additional chores because they are home more.”
Cheryl compares her previously schooled daughter to her homeschooled son. She writes, “When our daughter attended school, she spent so many hours on homework that she had no time to help at home at all. Keeping house is easier with our son at home because he does help out a lot.”
Not all parents find keeping up with chores easier. Over two-thirds of our survey respondents say that their homes get dirtier and disorganized faster because they homeschool.
Coping strategies vary. Many decide that having a house that resembles pictures in House Beautiful need not be a top priority. Delia says, “We focus on learning. Our time with our children is brief. I cannot see wasting it polishing knickknacks.”
Many decide that having a house that resembles pictures in House Beautiful need not be a top priority.
Deanna has also redefined her priorities, writing, “Housekeeping is difficult because I have less time. However, a clean house has become much lower on my priority list since homeschooling. It doesn’t bother me the way it used to!”
Some parents see their homes as places where teenagers learn independent-living skills. Jill explains, “It is difficult to have a neat house. We live here all day, busy with projects and learning. Learning is messy. Creativity is messy. We keep order because if we did not, we would not be able to find anything. Our home is a training ground for my children to learn how to keep house—how to cook, how to clean, and how to make a house a home. My goal in this season of my life is to raise healthy adults and not to have a house that looks like a model home.”
We also saw our home as a training ground—especially as our children moved into their teen years. I reasoned that if I did a household task—whether painting a room, cleaning a sink, or adjusting the air in the tires—my teenagers should be able to do those jobs also. We promoted independence by insisting on at least an hour of chores each day. Our son and daughter planned menus, cooked meals, shopped for groceries on a budget, learned basic auto maintenance, helped with home improvements, repaired torn clothing, and helped with sick pets.
Some of our survey respondents, especially those who live in rural areas, report that their teenagers do up to four hours of chores each day. David and Micki Colfax, homeschooling parents whose sons won admission to Harvard, assigned their children so many ranch chores that all four came to view sitting down with a book as a real treat. Hard physical work creates an unexpected reward—motivation to do academic work!
HOW WE DID IT
Here’s a list of chores survey respondents say their teenagers regularly perform:
Doing laundry
Home improvement projects
Mowing the lawn
House cleaning
Shoveling snow
Doing dishes
Taking out garbage
Sewing
Grocery shopping
Planning and preparing meals
Weeding
Yard work
Car care
Recycling
Canning
Child care
Whether you view chores as necessary evils, learning opportunities, or motivators, you will need to keep a modicum of order. Most home-cleaning experts recommend regular de-junking. Unused items add to disorganization. If you want to simplify housework, simplify your life by selling or giving away anything you have not used in five years. Go through every space in your home. That means cleaning out every closet, desk, and cupboard. It also means going through the basement, attic, and garage and deciding what stays and what goes. This may sound like a backwards approach to housework, but many moms say it helps to have less to deal with. Consider in-depth organization of one room or space each month of the year.
The logistics of homeschooling make everyone stop and think. Here the rubber meets the road, literally. Many families ask “How will you get there?” when their teenagers suggest new activities. And planning transportation fits into the larger scheme—planning household chores and family and outside activities. Although they do not have to work around school, home educators do need time and resource management skills.
Always on the go. That describes my two homeschooled teens. Every morning after breakfast and chores, we met to decide the big question—who gets the car? We choreographed as intricately as if we were staging a classical ballet to assure that everyone made it to work and activities.
Hard physical work creates an unexpected reward—motivation to do academic work!
Many of our survey respondents list their cars as their primary mode of transportation. Like Aletha, they cheerfully wear their taxi-driver hats. Some get help. Amy reports, “My husband takes a couple of late afternoons off to help with chauffeuring.”
Others breathe a sigh of relief when their teenagers learn to drive. Leanne writes, “Our son has his driver’s license. He gets himself to his activities. He also transports his younger sister. Otherwise I do the driving or share with a neighbor.”
Molly adds, “There’s nothing more wonderful than your oldest child getting a driver’s license! We live twelve miles from town, so transportation can be a logistical nightmare. I have been known to spend quite a bit of time at the library waiting for someone to finish an activity. We also transport our schoolwork to the library when several children need to be in town at different times.”
HOW WE DID IT
We do chores the first thing every morning to favorite music. We like Broadway show tunes. Our teenagers find it easier than confronting a math text at 8:00 A.M.!
—EMMA IN GEORGIA
Marta uses a combination of transportation strategies. “We combine several things into one outing, for example shopping while children attend music lessons. We carpool with other families. I have our girls take the bus to choir practice.”
Some families make it work without Mom chauffeuring. Tess explains, “I don’t drive. My husband takes everyone to kung fu and tai chi. The library is about three blocks away from our house.” Deanna, who lives in Japan, writes, “We do not have a car. They take the subway.” Dinah, in suburban Salem, Oregon, says her fourteen-year-old son either walks or bikes. He plans activities more than five miles away for evenings or weekends, when they have an automobile.
A homeschooling friend often reminds me: “Failure to plan is planning to fail.” Scheduling activities and making the best use of time present challenges to many adults, most particularly those adults who did not learn these skills as teenagers. Of course, there is a big difference between most thirteen-year-olds and most seventeen-year-olds. Many older adolescents work almost completely independently. Younger teens still need guidance. Either way, most parents want their teens to develop planning and scheduling skills.
Finding a balance between parent-directed and teen planning can be difficult. Jill writes, “This year, unlike last year, I schedule my sixteen-year-old daughter’s schoolwork. She was very busy last year. Although she had to check my schedule first and ask about activities, I found that she was getting lazy with schoolwork and chores. This year, we will work on planning one’s time and breaking things down to bite-size tasks. This is a life skill, valuable to her future.”
MONEY SEVER
Network with other homeschooling parents to form carpools.
Having a planning schedule helps. Deanna says, “We try to sit down on Monday and plan the week’s work.” Mira reports that they use day planners, the type found in office supply stores. Marla explains to her teenagers how to decide what comes first. “I have taught them to prioritize. There are things they need to do daily—seminary study and math. Other subjects, like reading and history, lend themselves to large chunks of time one to three times each week.”
Marta, mother of seven children, writes, “They prefer a list of things to do that they can check off as they work at their own pace. I need to schedule a few classes when I work with several of them—Latin, science, music theory—so that they fit into my schedule.”
Cheryl also decides the subjects taught, but leaves details up to her two teenage sons. She explains: “I don’t get them up, but by 10:00 A.M. they must have eaten, finished their chores, and have started schoolwork. I don’t care if it takes them all day or two hours. I make an assignment sheet from the computer on Monday. By Friday, it needs to be done. I am here for help, and we do our unit studies together. Otherwise, they are on their own. We do school four days a week. Thursday is our co-op day—no formal academics. We have lots of social things on Friday afternoon. If they have not completed their work, they stay home.”
Karen, in Washington State, adjusts plans according to the weather. She writes, “We schedule differently for every season. In the summer, they work in the afternoon with the air conditioner on. In the morning, they work on farm chores or we go to town to shop. In the winter, we work on the school subjects in the morning while waiting for the day to warm up and for the ice to melt from the roads.”
When queried about daily schedules, our survey respondents fall into two groups—those who can describe their daily routine and those who say that no day is typical.
When queried about daily schedules, our survey respondents fall into two groups—those who can describe their daily routine and those who say that no day is typical.
Cheryl falls into the first group. Writing about her fifteen-year-old son’s day, she says, “We begin school around 8:30 and start working through the subjects in the lesson plan book. We do math, then vocabulary, grammar, reading, and writing before lunch. After lunch, he practices piano. Then we do Bible, science, and social studies. We usually finish by 2:30 P.M. and sometimes as early as noon. He then checks his e-mail. He also plays computer games, cruises the Net, sees friends, reads car magazines, or listens to music.”
Marta also runs a tight ship. Here is one of her teenage daughter’s days:
Belinda, a single parent, builds homeschooling her thirteen-year-old son around her work schedule. She reports, “From 6:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M., I am at work. Kevin does his schoolwork from his assignment sheet. He also sleeps late and plays outside until I get home. Sometimes he goes to the library with one of his adult siblings. My twenty-eight-year-old daughter lives with us, and she helps occupy him while I am at work. From 2:30 to 5:00 P.M. Kevin usually does what he wants. Around 5:00 P.M. we have dinner and then do school. It usually takes a couple of hours to check his work, read, and go over new stuff. We are very unstructured—as much as we can be and still get the job done.”
Susanna says they have no typical days. Here she lists a previous day’s activities for her son, age thirteen.
| 6:00 A.M. | Got up, ate breakfast, did chores. |
| 9:00 A.M.–12:00 noon | Robotics class at local junior college. |
| 12:00–12:45 P.M. | Lunch. |
| 12:45–3:00 P.M. | Schoolwork. |
| 3:00–6:30 P.M. | Swim practice and supper. |
| 6:30–8:00 P.M. | Free time. |
| 8:00–9:00 P.M. | Boy Scouts. |
| 9:30 P.M | Bed. |
Dinah operates a day care in her home. She reports, “We never have a typical day. Yesterday, our fourteen-year-old son did two lessons in Saxon math. We read for thirty minutes from the Bible. He listed his goals for this coming school year, including special projects he wanted to undertake. He wrote letters to Grandma and Grandpa, thanking them for letting him spend the summer with them. He also wrote a professional letter to Grandpa’s boss, thanking him for a learning opportunity. He accomplished all this while helping me—picking up toys, changing diapers, fixing dinner (it was his day), working on a combustion engine, practicing guitar, and bathing his youngest brother.”
As your teenagers mature, discuss priorities and let them practice making their own schedules.
No matter what your situation, you can find a routine that fits your family. As your teenagers mature, discuss priorities and let them practice making their own schedules. Plan with them, and practice the fine arts of negotiation and compromise to make time for everything.
Some of our survey respondents report that they feel no need to schedule time with spouses, away from children. However, a substantial majority, about three-fourths of those who answered our questionnaire, say time alone with spouses is essential. Some have special times every day. Others rely on “dates” every week or at least once per month. Amy writes, “We have tea and walk together every morning.” Susanna says that she tries to get out with her husband without their children a couple of times per month, even if it is only to the store.
Lydia reports, “I try to set bedtime for about 9:30. Then we get a couple of hours to ourselves. We usually sit outside or watch a movie.”
Leanne describes how she and her husband make time for each other. “Each week we have one morning breakfast out and one evening dinner or cup of coffee at a restaurant. We walk two miles, three to four times per week. In addition, three times a year we go away for a weekend in a motel. For our anniversary, we go out for a really fancy dinner, a movie, and an overnight trip. Doing these things is how my husband looks out for my well-being, and I appreciate it!”
You know the old saying. If you do not take care of yourself, you will not be able to take care of anyone else. Of course, homeschooling can make it very difficult to meet your needs. Some parents sneak time alone. Molly comments, “I get maybe an hour per week. I hide at the library.” Many busy moms use their alone time for exercise. Laura says, “I work out, and that takes about an hour a day.” Some block out part of the day. Emma confesses, “I warn everyone not to bother me between 1:00 and 2:30 in the afternoon. That is when I read, walk, and play piano.”
Siblings, housework, schedules, family and personal needs—the home front presents unexpected challenges to all homeschooling families. No one approach works best for all. Experienced travelers often arrive at solutions by trial and error, eventually finding the most productive strategies that allow them to remain in balance or at least juggle successfully. Above all, our homes provide training, where our teenagers learn the realities of hard work, planning, negotiation, and compromise.
Decide how you will occupy younger siblings. Peruse homeschooling catalogs, and gather learning resources and toys. Give some of these a special “stamp.” Put them away and save them for times you and your teens really need to focus.
Think about at least one learning activity your entire family can do together. Depending on your children’s ages, consider videos, foreign language instruction, music appreciation, art, reading aloud, field trips, and even sports.
Discuss chores with your teenagers. Certainly, they should be working at least as hard as you do! Divvy up household jobs. Make them part of the daily schedule.
Think about your comfort level with respect to daily schedules. How much responsibility should your teenagers assume for planning their time?
Talk with your spouse about how much time you spend together now. Is it enough? Brainstorm and discuss ways to keep your marriage alive while you homeschool.
Remember to take care of yourself. Make time for activities that feed your spirit and renew your enthusiasm.
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