Managing Home & Homeschool

Quite a while back I wrote for an online homeschooling magazine called Heart of the Matter. I thought that I would share this article I wrote for them. It is several years old and a little outdated but still very timely for anyone looking to manage their home and their homeschool. I hope you enjoy.
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For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1

Time management is one area that greatly effects my ability to teach my children at home. I wrote in an earlier post about prioritizing. Once you have prioritized and weeded out activities having a plan of action to carry things out is of great importance. One of the best ways to manage your time is in my opinion with a working schedule. I will readily admit that this is an area that needs continual work in my household.

Schedules must be revamped often. As the scripture above says, for everything there is a season. There are different things that happen in our lives that will interrupt your plans and schedules and these call for adjustments. In our home we are going through a few of those “seasons”. We have the season of an upcoming move and the season of morning sickness. Once your schedule is in place, try not to be so rigid that you cannot adjust for a change in season or a surprise storm or two.

A schedule is simply a written plan for ordering those things you deem as priorities into your day. You designate blocks of your time for specific activities. It helps you to find the time to accomplish the tasks you have before you. It can also relieve some of the stress of life because you have a plan. It is a way to direct your children to the next activity for the day without constantly being interrupted with questions about what to do next.

Everyone has a different comfort level when it comes to how much structure to put into their day. I find that with the larger my family becomes the more structure the better. There is simply more to get accomplished than before and I need to have a plan of attack.

I came across a great book that has been a tremendous help. What first caught my eye was the fact that the author was also a homeschooling mother of eight. She is someone who can relate to the sheer volume of things that pertain to a large family. I thought that if this worked for her large family then I could implement some of her ideas and have them work for me too! Her book would even be helpful for smaller families.

I ran into a friend who also used this book to organize her household. She is the mother of seven. She uses this plan and it is what enables her to manage her time wisely. When I received my book, I read if cover to cover in the first day. I was so excited! I pulled out the toolkit that comes with it and began to put our schedule together. After three days of trying to make this schedule work, I called my friend crying. I simply could not fit everything into our day. Her words of advice were to remind me that I could do all that the Lord desired me to do but that I could not necessarily do everything that I desired to do! I needed to prioritize and cut out some things. I simply cannot do everything that a mother of two has time to accomplish. I have more children with many more levels of educational needs. After prayer and discussion with my husband, I cut and cut some more. At last I had a working schedule.

It takes time and effort to implement a schedule and to get the family started. Once you have committed to it and worked at it for a while you will begin to fall naturally into a routine. You learn what takes longer and what is done more quickly. You simply adjust your schedule to fit your family. I found that I needed several schedules, almost one for everyday. Some days we had piano and other days we had to finish early for AWANA.

I do not currently have a written schedule. We have not used one this past year and I feel as if we have not accomplished nearly as much as we should have accomplished. After we are settled into our new home, a new schedule will appear and be implemented. My life is simply easier when we have one.

I suggest sticking as closely to your schedule as possible when you first start. This will help you to develop the habit of “running a tight ship.” Once you have that, make more adjustments. You can determine then how strictly to follow your schedule. It will differ for all of us. My friend I mentioned above followed hers to the “T.” Her life was extremely structured and her family thrived under that structure! I am a bit more relaxed. As an example, I do not schedule my nursing babies and needed some flexibility. The main idea here is to have a plan, a written plan. Not just to have a written plan but one that is actually workable!

Take some time and schedule your priorities and see how much more you will accomplish. Do you currently have a working schedule? Have you ever used this book? What have you found are the benefits of scheduling? Leave me a comment and let’s have a discussion about it to encourage each other in our efforts!

Here is that wonderful book I mentioned.

This book is written by Steve and Terri Maxwell.

I highly recommend this book for those looking to manage their home in a more effective way. There is such great information and the toolkit is included. If you look on their website you will find testimonials, information on what else is included, and schedules from other moms.

MANAGERS OF THEIR HOMES

Sharing My Lesson Plans

I have had many ask about my lesson plans recently. I thought I would post an example for you. These are not completely filled in but it will give you an idea of what we are doing and how it is organized. I have one page for each day. My notebook then has 180 pages for 180 days of school.  This also does NOT include our extra curricular activities outside of the home.  This is used as a check off list.  When one thing is completed we mark it off and all should be completed by the end of the day. This is a bit scrunched on here and looks cleaner when printed out. I would love to know what some of you moms use to track your lesson plans for the year.

Homeschool Organization

People often ask me HOW we manage things around our house. So I thought that I would share with you a few things that have worked well in our large family homeschooling situation. Hopefully, they will be beneficial to you. Even if it is not something that you can incorporate, it is always fun to see how others organize their homeschool. Hopefully some of our ideas can be of help in the upcoming school year!

1.Get an early start. This is a very difficult one for me but it makes such a big difference. I am not a morning person and am often up several times a night with little ones but I have found that if we get an earlier start we accomplish so much more. Things tend to run more smoothly for us as well. We try to be up, dressed, fed, and ready for school by 8 am. I will readily admit that it is a rare morning that this actually happens. We shoot for this never the less and it is becoming a more frequent occurrence. It seems if we start school work any time after 9 am then we most likely will not finish our work and we are going all day long. If we start at 8 am we are almost done by lunch and are finished by 2pm. I do not know why it works this way other than we are more energetic and motivated to make the most of the day when the day is still fresh.

2. Keep a stash of pencils, pens, staples, glue sticks, and any other necessary items. Find an easy place to store them. I have a basket thing that I keep ours in. It sits atop the book shelves listed in #2 above. It is on the end that is next to the stairs so even the shorter children can climb a few stairs and be able to reach what they need without any difficulty.

3. Organization is key. Her are a few more ways we organize our things.

4. Take advantage of nap time! Nap time is when you can accomplish a lot! You can finish lessons with the older children or correct papers without the little ones making noise or trying to take pencils. You can have chore time and do a quick pick up to straighten the house, or you can take a short refreshing nap to help fuel you for the rest of the day. You can have your Bible readings or other reading. You can use this time as I am now, blogging. Take advantage of this time.

Do You Need to DeClutter?

Do you need to declutter? This is something I struggle with but I have found an easy way to work on managing the amount of clutter in our home. What I attempt to do is to periodically grab 2 trash bags. One for goodwill and one for garbage. I go through the house and do not stop until both are filled. If I do this once a month, it helps me cut down on the clutter and the trash. This also helps to keep the youngins motivated to keep their things put away, after all Momma might throw it away. Sometimes I will give the children a bag and tell them they must fill it from their room before they can do anything else. It is a good way to declutter. If regular trash bags seem to overwhelming at first try smaller sized bags and fill them (Walmart bags work really well)!! That way when you move to a larger size bag you will be used to filling the bag rather than stopping short. Sometimes if I am on a roll, I keep going and end up with a couple bags worth! If you are on a roll don’t stop but make sure you do not stop before your one bag is finished.

Do you have any decluttering tips????

HOTM – Schedules

The May edition of The Heart of the Matter homeschool magazine has been published! You can catch me over there today! Stop by, read, and leave some comments! Have a terrific Thursday.

Main Page

Direct Link to my article on schedules.

School Buckets Show & Tell

Organizing the materials and books for each child is also important. I had a friend introduce me to this particular idea and it has made a big difference in organizing our materials. Each child receives their very own plastic bucket. They are similar to milk crates in size. Each child places their folders, math books, readers, journals, paper, container of pencils, and anything else that is specific to their course of study in these containers. They have a designated place for their buckets and are required to pull them out before school and to return them after school.

Visit CanadaGirl for more Show and Tell.