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| Combining Work and Home School |  Many employed or self-employed mothers (nurses, writers, business owners, publishers, and others) are homeschooling their children while working from a few to over 40 hours a week. Some mothers separate work and school, doing each at a certain time; others consider life as school - their children are always learning.
"How do you teach your children and perform the rest of your responsibilities? Firstly, we do not spend much of time on field trips or on other activities that pull us in too many directions," says Deb Deffinbaugh, co-owner of Timberdoodle Company.
Finding Time
Try to make up your mind what's essential. If you work, you have to give up something. Your sanity or health will suffer in the end if you do everything for a while," says Nancy Greer. Over 40 hours a week Nancy works outside her home, while her husband works at his home business. Then she stays 32 hours of the weekend at a home with special-needs children. Even more, the Greers publish a newsletter and run a homeschool supply company.
If you want to find the time to combine working and homeschooling, right down what you do - every hour of every day - for a week or two. Then, add the number of hours spent on each type of activity. You will discover that you have spent hours doing things that could be ignored, and replaced with more worthwhile attempts. And most of us could become more effective. Catherine White advises, "Simplify housework and cooking, ignore TV, stay home and run all errands on one day."
Scheduling
A twelve-month schedule works for some, while others do school during the months that business is slower. With a nine-to-five job, two to three hours each evening and four or more on the weekend could satisfy individual purposes and requirements. (The total amount of supervised hours depends on such factors as whether your child can learn independent, your state's requirements, and how much informal studying you plan to do.) Saturdays would be ideal for practical activities, museums, reading, workbooks, or texts. On Sundays, you can read and dictate to teach language arts, hear recitation of memory verses for speech practice, and read aloud about creation science.
Elise Griffith - who has two home businesses - says, "I 'work' mainly during afternoon quiet time and after the boys go to bed." It is common to divide the day in half, study in the morning and work in the afternoon. While Mom works, children can either nap, work on projects, read, or play. Anne Olwin - artist, writer and business owner - advises, "Prepare ahead of time for deadlines." And Catherine White reasonably says, "Fit school in - don't be uncompromising - sometimes fit work in."
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