School work is # 1 during the school year. I don't want my kids to grow up and not be able to function well in this world. I know that there are some people out there who would greatly criticize the way that I homeschool because they would call it "schooling at home" - which just means that I take what they would have been doing in a traditional school setting and have them do it at home with me. Book work - others might call it. This is just the way that I roll. I have temporarily tried other methods of homeschooling such as unschooling or child led learning, but those methods just don't sit right with me. I think that they are wonderful ways to learn for other families who choose to go that route, but it is just not the way that I think is best for my family. I initially wanted to do school for 3 weeks on and 1 week off year round. The problem is that the kids and I got into a pretty good groove and I never took that second 3 week period off which threw everything out of whack. Which threw everything else (food and housework) out of whack too.
Because of this, my house is picked up but has dust bunnies under the couch the size small rodents. The floors need to be scrubbed down in earnest. The refrigerator needs to be scoured. And so on...
The grocery budget needs to become just that again...a budget. Right now I am afraid to look at what I have spent this month. Although, with me actually taking care of myself and watching what I eat (which in turns means that I am watching extra carefully what everyone else is eating) I am slowly taming the budget once again.
One of the reasons (and there were several) that I chose the 3 weeks on / 1 week off method was that it would allow me, in the off week, to scrub my house down. This meant that each and every month my house would be deep cleaned from the ceilings down to the floors and everything in between. The weeks that we were schooling would just be spent on the everyday chores such as sweeping, vacuuming, and wiping down the bathrooms.
So, my solution for trying to manage it all is this: don't try to manage it all at one time. (Please keep in mind that some of you may be amazing at managing it all, and if you are please write a book that I can purchase so that I can figure out how to do it as well and still keep my sanity.) By not trying to get it all done at once I will be more effective in getting it all done over time than if I tried to get it all done at the same time, but half-assed. (I am not sure I should be saying that word, but it fit so I am going to use it.) Does that make any sense?
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| (Photo courtesy of: harborathletic.com) |
This week we are taking off from school. The kids were excited that I was going to allow them the week off and follow my original schedule. (Another reason I use the 3 week on method is that their school schedule is intense and this allows them a week off once a month to just chill and recharge.) The girls have been playing all morning and the boys have been creating a Minecraft world (on paper because I won't let them play online right now). There is a feeling of relaxation in the air. It is nice.
In just a few minutes I am going to crank up the music and mix up some of my homemade cleaning solutions and begin to clean my first zone. I created a cleaning schedule that breaks the house down into 5 zones. I needed to this so as not to overwhelm myself. This way when I am working on the house my one week out of the month I can still operate my day-to-day life while also getting the housework done. If I didn't do it this way I would either clean like a psycho nut for 2 days on end and become a crabby gorzilla or I would become overwhelmed by the amount of space I needed to clean and not do anything at all.
The zones look like this:
Zone A: My room, Elizabeth's room, Sarah's room, and the boy's room. (The girls days of sharing a room were quite short lived.)
Zone B: Master bathroom, main bathroom, casita bathroom, and the kitchen.
Zone C: Computer desk area, hallway 1, cedar closet, laundry room, hallway 2
Zone D: Dining room, family room, living room
Zone E: Music room, school room, play room
Since Wednesday's are my busiest days of the week I am making that my light day of cleaning. Tuesday's are my easiest day of the week because we have nothing going on, so I loaded on the chores that day.
So, there it is. My master plan...now let's see how well I follow it.
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| (Photo courtesy of: trentrenshawndrum.com) |
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