Our New Routine

When we moved out of my sister's house, we decided to home school the kids to avoid changing schools for a third time this year, and perhaps a fourth school before the year is over, depending on if we extend our lease here or not.

I'd say the hardest part of home schooling is feeling like you are teaching the kids enough challenging curriculum. There are lots of websites and workbooks at the store, but I need a little more of a layout. I do love the casual hours. And in an effort to teach the girls writing, spelling, proofreading, and computer skills, they each now have their own blog. (BTW, their blogs are private, but if you want an invite just let me know.)

But, I've been too afraid of not challenging them enough. Josh and I heard of a program that is actually an online public school. This means that the kids can work through the curriculum at their own pace, it is moderated by the state of Arizona so state standards must be met, there is curriculum for math, language arts, science, history, art, music, literature, and even P.E. So, we signed up.

This program will be great, I think. The problem is that the materials (provided for free because it's a public school) won't arrive until next week, so I'm trying to work online with three kids. Because it's a public school, each kid has to do lessons for 2 hours (Matt) or 4 hours (Emma and Abby) and it has to be logged or we are in trouble for truancy. This means that I have spent my mornings and afternoons doing school. Then I make dinner. Then I try to prepare for the next day of school. Then I go to bed. Once our materials arrive we can use the workbooks and student guides instead of the computer and then kids can work simultaneously instead of one at a time. I'm very excited for that. But I hate my days being overrun by school.

The day the materials come, I will party. Until then, I think I've come up with some solutions to schedule everything. It's mostly a matter of getting used to the whole thing. I'm getting there. Today I had enough time to even workout and shower. It was great.