Managing household chores while homeschooling...

The farmhouse where I homeschool my brood.

Homeschooling is a serious commitment of time and resources and finding ways of sneaking in all the other work can be a challenge. If you want some quick tips for managing the school part, check out this post HERE. I have ten of eleven children still at home and a small family farm and this means that we have a lot of schoolwork and a lot of chores to get done on a daily basis. It is important to realize that there are some competing values here and will be some sacrifices. There are only so many hours in a day and you will need to remember that homeschooling will consume several hours a day and this is okay. 

Remembering that it is really a job can help you remember that what you are doing all day is worth doing. That said, you will need to still have clothes to wear, dishes to eat off, and food to put in those dishes. There is a happy medium to be found.

I used to have another blog that was specifically food based but one of my most popular posts ever was about house cleaning. Over 67,000 unique readers read that specific post which tells me it spoke to a need people have. I edited it, added to it, and am including that information here. I live in a different house than I did when I originally wrote the post so if it doesn’t sound like my current home, there is a reason for that.

I should tell you that I have a master school schedule with some chores listed, such as how we divide the lunch duties between the high school kids who are supposed to decide what they will cook the day before and make sure we have the ingredients. While they are not perfect at it, they are learning the important skills of meal planning and making sure that they have what they need before they start. I help with fasting days since those are honestly more challenging.

Laundry is one of those concerns that overwhelms people. We have an unusual amount of laundry. If I fall behind, digging out is all but impossible. I have eight children who are able to at least start laundry or switch the laundry though only six are able to reach the controls on the dryer and need help. I switch between the older eight and the youngest two have to help sort. If we are playing catch up, four or five kids a day have the responsibility of starting a load of laundry and switching it, remembering to hang the clothes that must hang and being sure to hang their father’s dress shirt for the office. If we are not behind, then it is only two or three a day. After school, I fold all the laundry at once and put in piles according to the owner. If kids will help, I will allow them a movie. If they stop being helpful, I turn it off. The kids have to put away all the laundry immediately.

All the socks are pooled into a giant hamper and rarely sorted. I used to do that but, seriously, in winter we go through one or two dozen pairs of socks a day. We have hundreds of socks. Let that sink in: hundreds. I finally gave up matching socks on the advice of a friend with twelve kids (some are in college). When they need to match, we match them, but most of the time they are never seen so it saves some peace. 

We have set chore times. We have a set of chores that need to be done in the morning and we work through those before school, the laundry is the only exception. Each child is responsible for his assigned load, and it must be done or they lose privileges and gain chores. We used to take a longer lunch break but with staggered online classes and so many students, we have moved chores to afterschool. There is also afternoon milking and there are evening chores at that time. During school hours, my house gets very messy but we all chip in after we are done. There is a lot of truth in the old saying, “Many hands make light work.”

As for knowing what to do and when to do it, divide your house into sections. If you are an internet junkie, you might like to follow Flylady's schedule but it can feel overwhelming if you are trying to dig out. Do not allow yourself to be paralyzed by fear, avoid complicated methods that cause panic. Your mental health is worth more than that. To help you plan your zones, here is how I did mine back in the day. You should have four zones because there are about four weeks to the month. Make a list of the chores from each zone and whether they are daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal.

• Zone 1: Dining room and school room
• Zone 2: Entry and Kitchen
• Zone 3: Living room and downstairs bathroom
• Zone 4: Upstairs hallway and bath, bedrooms

What should go on a list of chores for a zone? My zone one chores include:

Daily

• Sweep
• Wash table
• Shake runner
• Tidy bookshelves
• Weekly
• Vacuum
• Dust
• Tidy shelves
• Clean out key basket (a catch-all for mail, keys, and phone chargers)

Monthly

• Wash baseboards
• Dust light over dining room table

Seasonal (this is my freaky start to the school year or holiday time deep, deep clean the kids dread)

• Wash curtains
• Wash windows
• Wash picture frame glass

You should also create a list of 5-minute chores (things that need to get done but can be completed in less than five minutes), a list of "hot spots" or places where your family tends to pile stuff, and the things that should get done daily. I offer rewards to kids who will clean my many hot spots.

5-Min Chores

• Sorting mail
• Emptying the kitchen compost
• Taking out the garbage (each kid gets a bathroom or the kitchen and it all goes at once)
• Cleaning the key basket out
• Hot Spot Examples (just pick them up once a day)
• Hubby's dresser cleared and tidied (we both dump things here so it is not just his mess)
• The dresser in the dining room cleared and tidied
• The farm cupboard surface tidied
• Cull the magazine basket

Daily Chores

This is a complicated list, trying to decide what you should do on a daily basis can be difficult. I divide mine by the time of day:

Waking Chores: grooming, bed making (each little kid has an older kid who is assigned to help her), I unload the dishwasher and put away hand washed dishes and make the coffee first thing in the morning

Meal Chores: Cook meal, wash dishes (and dry and put away), load dishwasher, wash table, sweep only if really messy (but always after supper), make sure the little kids have faces washed (the littles had an assigned helper), tidy entry

After School Chores: Tidy the school room, tidy the living room (where the little girls play during school hours), and make sure the entry is clear. I stand at the front door and tidy what I can see from there, this makes my house seem cleaner than it is and means that I am not embarrassed to open the front door.

Making these lists can seem overwhelming and I want to assure you that it won't be bad. If you are worried about the time it will take to make these lists, sit down with a cup of coffee or tea or even wine and take out eight sheets of paper. Give yourself just thirty minutes. Label each with one category from the list below:

• Zone One
• Zone Two
• Zone Three
• Zone Four
• Daily Chores
• Hot Spots
• 5 Min Chores
• People available to do chores (this is anyone over four)

Then take your zone lists and fold into thirds vertically and label each section as follows:

• Daily (put anything from each zone's daily list onto this one catch-all list)
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Seasonal

Give yourself no more than three minutes to list the things that you think should be included on each list. Don't worry if you have forgotten something, this is a plan in progress!  Just start filling out your sheets. Try it for a day and see how it goes, you can always come back and add or move something. If you decide that something is put on the monthly list that you really want doing seasonally, move it. The idea is to find what your particular needs are and find a way to meet them. I know that my chores change on the season. Mopping the floor happens a lot in the winter since we consistently have snow that covers the ground for five to seven months out of the year, with no breaks. Nothing is carved in stone and can be changed whenever you need it to be changed.

The reason the lists work is that you know what needs to be done and can assign the work or jump in every day. If you cannot handle any more than just completing the daily list, start there. There is a temptation to just try to do everything all at once and it can lead to feelings of depression and being overwhelmed. Your goal should be to just start doing the daily chores and go from there.

I have one more post to come in the series and it will be a blow by blow account of my day homeschooling my nine school-aged kids with a preschooler in tow.

Just how do you homeschool?

We are all caterpillars just crawling around
and eating leaves and sometimes changing.

Of all the questions that I have been asked over the years, the most common is this one. I think it is because often people really know well what the brick and mortar school looks like because it is the one that most of us know so well. There are a few systems at play but generally they all function in the same kind of way. Homeschooling is an entirely new game and it is hard to really figure out what each family is doing because each family does it differently and sometimes one family does it differently at different times.

The needs, challenges, resources, and strengths that we come into homeschooling with will change over time as we and our children change. Because there are lots of ways to go about this, about as many as there are homeschooling families, I want to give some more general guidance about homeschooling and household management based on what has worked well for my family. Later in this series, I will go more into how my family is currently schooling. This first post will deal with some specific tools in my kit that I use in order to keep track of the chaos on school days and my general approach to school. The second will talk about how I manage the other household affairs which is a real issue (find that post HERE). The third will deal specifically with how I school with my children’s specific program. All about us. Hopefully, it won't bore you.

Today is all about having a homeschool toolkit. I have a few systems that I have always consistently deployed to keep my head above water and before I get into the nitty-gritty, I want to talk about these.

1. School toys for the preschool gang. Always, always, always have some school toys that may only be used during school hours. We use train tracks, blocks, wooden puzzles, lace tracing cards, random playing cards, and even a cheap (like SUPER cheap) digital camera. These things can only come out during school hours only. I have two bins and they get switched out and they cannot have both out at the same time.

2. Baby jail and prison guard. I have used anything I could get my hands on the keep the active babies out of death’s grasp including walls built of furniture, wide laundry buckets, playpens, whatever. You need a safe place for baby to play when they want to explore a bit. I always kept a special basket of baby toys which only could only be used in desperate situations like a kid crying over math or my need to use the bathroom. We also have used a kitchen timer and cycled kids through a half hour of guard duty at a time. It keeps the younger set entertained with fresh new games all day and gives the older kids a chance for a break.

3. Just right books. Every kid needs a book that is easy enough to read that they don’t need help. Little ones can have an “I Spy” book. The point is to keep something on hand that will keep them occupied while they wait for you. If they get to a point where they cannot do any more work, but you aren’t available, have them do some penmanship and then open their just right book.

4. Post-It notes. I use loads of them. Tons. Each kid needs a stack of his own. When they get to a problem they can’t solve, a question that they have, they can write it down and move on. They give me the note and I get back to them when I can. When I need them to work on something or check it, I put a note on the cover of that book. When it is done, they give me the note for me to double check. Post-It notes glue all the little loose pieces of my life together. They sure as heck better not go out of business.

5. Get ready the night before. At-schoolers do things like pick out clothes the night before and pack lunches and school bags. In the case of homeschoolers and at-schoolers, knowing that no one has underwear is easier to deal with the night before than in the morning, so do it the night before. Have a breakfast plan so you aren’t panicked in the morning. Cereal is fine. In fact, cereal is freaking great if you are protecting your mental health by just making that plan. If you have a space dedicated to do school, do a quick pass through that area and remove the laundry baskets, coats, shoes, and whatever will slow you down in the morning. You are shipshape and ready for action, Captain.

6. Have a school plan for the kids done ahead of time. My favorite time to do this in the afternoon when we are wrapping up for the day. In fact, I have a scheduled time for it. Some people like to do it when their kids are in bed and they can do it uninterrupted. Both plans are good. The trick is that you need to do it before the kids are yelling at each other, the dog is barking out the window, and everyone needs to just get started. Take a comp notebook, write a list of their subjects and make a quick note about what to do. They can check it off when they are done and you don’t have to constantly be available to answer, “What next, Mom?”

7. Set boundaries. For ages, we had an outgoing answering machine message that said, “Hi, this is the Naasko Family. We are unavailable during school hours. Leave a message and we will call at lunch or at the end of the day.” I even made a sign for my door when we lived in a busy suburban neighborhood (it was on the back door since that was where the kids went to knock). If you are bad about the temptation that the cell phone might be, put it in a drawer for later. If the TV is the big draw, put the remotes in the same drawer. If your kids become distracted, you might need to lock out some sites on the computers. Don’t worry, it is not forever. Basically, you can set a timed lockout so that you can focus on the immediate task by using this Google extension called Stay Focusd. We use it on our computers and it works well. I have had to use it when I was procrastinating on book writing so it works for moms, too. 

8. Schedule two tidy ups a day. We do a quick run through the whole house and everybody has to be onboard, once in the morning and once in the evening. Set a timer for twenty minutes and make it a race. Make a list and they can be done when it’s done. Do like I do and make stay up television and device availability dependent on it. You can do it a lot of ways but do it.

9. Start each kid with their strongest subject every day. Make sure that you do not put off the hardest until the end of the day. I usually try to put it second, if possible. Start with a success and move onto something harder and switch back and forth as much as possible.

10. Give and get a hug. If you have a kiddo who is prone to meltdown over poor subjects, be available at that time. Be ready for it. Give the other kids a break at this time. If you feel like you are just firefighting and not getting anywhere with this kid and subject, stop beating yourself up right now and take a deep breath. Then reach over and hug that kid who is just falling apart. Rome was not built in a day so don’t think Trig mastery will happen overnight. Keep building, keep hugging, and keep on keeping on. Then find someone to give you a hug, you need it, too. Call me and I will send you a virtual hug.

Tomorrow I will have a post on how I incorporate laundry and other housework into our day. I will also talk about the different ways in which this has changed depending on the number of children I had at the time and their ages. You will still need to do dishes and cook meals and wash clothes while schooling kids, so this is ultimately important.

The third post will talk about my family specifically and be more of a slice of life. You will find out all about how we use St Raphael Online. I have children signing into their one-hour lessons staggered all day. We use Khan Academy for math and Rosetta Stone for language and all of these are computer based. We use a mix of computer-based learning and text-based for science. I have a limited amount of internet connectivity at a time and a limited number of devices so I have to careful to assign kids to their work based on this. As for spelling, grammar and composition, and poetry, these are the subjects that they do with me. To help me manage schooling nine children with one preschooler running around, I group the kids according to ability. I have four levels of spelling and two for grammar and slot to run through all the kids’ poems they are memorizing.

Looking for that household chores post? Find it HERE.

Teaching poetry to children...

Poetry is my favorite subject to teach. It is a salve for my soul when the day is rushed and busy and all I want to do is sit quietly with some tea and no voices, big or little, chiming at me. I find myself both alert and at peace and ready to jump into the lessons. I love to teach rhythm, rhyme, meter, and the different styles of poetry. I have a four-inch binder with years of poems memorized by all eleven of my children, a section of my own, and finally a section of samples. In my sample section are lovely examples of different styles and even a compare and contrast portion where I use trite poems paired with high caliber ones of the same theme and topic. I think it is important to read the poor quality ones and then compare them with the best to be found in the English language in order to teach children what true quality is.

I think that memorizing poetry is lost art and skill and I refuse to let my children grow up without being able to do so. I have often found myself speaking to other parents about just how to go about this and it is probably because the available advice out there is just awful. It usually revolves around copying something again and again. This is ridiculous. Our spoken language is primary, it precedes the written word, and it is not how ancient peoples remembered their sagas and histories. The most effective way is really the most basic and happens incrementally and easily. Let me explain.

Starting Memorization

I start when my children are about two years old. It is nothing formal, just organic and natural. We start by reciting little poems based on the things that they see and hear and do in their ordinary lives. The very first poem I have taught all of my children is now recited by them all every time they see the moon.

I see the moon,
And the moon sees me.
God bless the moon,
And God bless me!

Finding small opportunities for similar things helps children develop the skill of making associations and memorizing text. These small poems pave the way for very long ones later. By the time my kids are in their early teens, they memorize poems with hundreds of lines, as many as three or four hundred.

Teaching Memorization

I copy or print out a public domain version of a poem to mark up. Next to the poem, I can make notes about the poem, the time period, or pronunciation things that might be important to know. The first day, we simply read the poem through completely and then we talk about the generalities of the poem such as how it makes us feel or what kinds of images it evokes. Then we go line by line and explain idioms, phrases, and meaning. Then we memorize the name of both the poet and the poem. I put a small check next to each. Every day we will review what we learned the day before and then learn a new section. If a line is very long (as happens is Wordsworth and Tennyson), then I draw a slash mark in the middle and we learn half at a time. We start memorization in full the next day.

I read the line to them and then ask them to repeat it, we do this five times in a row. For older children or teens who can and should memorize two or more lines at a time, we add in the second line. I will read the first line, ask them to repeat it fives times in a row. Then I read the second, and ask them to repeat this one, also five times. After this I read the first, they repeat it, then I read the second, and they repeat this. We do this a few times until they can do both lines together. In the end, they need to be able to recite all the new text by themselves with no prompts. Once we have learned the new lines, I check off the lines and they recite the name of the poem, the poet, and all the text they know up to that point. If during the recitation, you notice that there is a word that is they might be tripping over, underline it in pencil and perhaps drop a hint when they come to it. When they know it, erase the line.

When the child has memorized the entire poem, we have them recite it for everyone at dinner. Some poems have special rewards attached to them, like "The Cow" by Robert Lewis Stevenson. When my children have learned this, they can help me make an apple tart with puff pastry and we serve it with freshly whipped cream. An important part of this is to use real whipped cream that we whip since I want to tie in the importance of the role that dairy cows play in our lives. Here on the farm, we even separate the cream ourselves but that is admittedly something very few families would be able to do.

That said, if you are in the neighborhood and your child can recite that poem for me, I will let them separate cream and help them make their own apple tart!

Maintenance

Once a poem is memorized, they need to recite it every day. We start out each lesson by reciting all the poems they have learned. I will say the name of the poem and they will repeat it, tell me the name of the poet, and then they will recite the poem. Then we memorize the current poem's new lines. While this might sound overwhelming, this really only takes 5-6 minutes per child. The older children have far fewer poems though they are longer and the youngest children learn such short ones that it takes only a minute or two to recite what they know. If you are spending longer than that, you are trying to memorize too much or a too complicated text.

Once a child knows five poems, I start a rotation with each of the four oldest poems said each on one day each week for review and only the most recently memorized poem is still said daily. Then we work on the new poem. This becomes more common with little children who can easily memorize ten or so poems from Robert Louis Stevenson a year. I don't want to cover more than ten poems a year so if a child is learning them that quickly, say more than one a month, we will start to look for longer poems.

Ballads

When my children are in middle school, they begin to memorize ballads such as "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson which my oldest daughter memorized completely when she was twelve. In this case, it is best to treat each section as a poem on its own. I would have the child recite the sections as if they were separate poems. Then each morning they recite a previous section as well as the one immediately learned, then learn the new lines within the context of the current section. In this case, have the child recite the poem in its entirety weekly. It might be best for them to not learn new lines on this day. My daughter's poem listed above is nineteen stanzas, each nine lines long, for a total of one hundred and seventy one lines learned in just ten months. My second oldest son memorized "Lepanto" by G.K. Chesterton, and he told me that by the end he knew it so well, he felt as if he was sitting back and listening to it each time he recited it. There is a lot of pride in memorizing this long of a text. It is well worth making the effort.

On a practical note, now my children can memorize all kinds of text immediately. Phone numbers, WiFi passkeys, addresses, and all kinds of information just click into place since their minds are used to assimilating information.

Two Caveats

I mean this word literally, there are two limitations.

Poetry Journals

Don't. If your child likes to journal and wants to create a poetry journal with copies of their poems, perhaps coupled with art or personal reflections, they will do it without you asking. If you force it, you will find many children begin to dread poetry. In the most ancient expressions of poetry, they were recited, not written out and doodled on. Keep this part alive and allow a child who has other creative interests explore them if they desire.

Selecting Poems

Allow your children to choose their own poems with limited guidance. They might need to be encouraged to try something longer or shorter but generally let them find something that interests them. That said, give them excellent choices and do not permit them to use popular song lyrics, trite or silly greeting card style poetry or humor pieces. These things have their place and it is not at the feast table that is poetry recitation. One of the things that are most important is to teach children what is the highest standard for human expression. We might sometimes laugh over a silly little poem, particularly one written for children, but our children need to see this as a childish expression and not fully actualized.

I will be putting together a downloadable form for keeping track of each child's poetry work and I will show photos of our actual poetry book. Until then, start looking for some good poetry to share with your children. 

Home Schooling in a Large Family

Home schooling is always a challenge, there are no two ways around that, but there are particular challenges to home schooling many children at the same time with younger children in tow. The most children I have schooled at one time is eight (between kindergarten and sophomore) with a baby and many years I gave birth to a baby mid-year. Here is how I kept my head above water and hopefully it will help you do the same.

School Toys

First of all, it is important to some unexpected prep-work. When you have younger children or even babies, you need to make a plan for them to be entertained. Our children have had a large plastic bin known as the “school toys” which have always only been available during school time. Because the dynamics in my own family, with the exception of one lone girl, I had my five boys first who were followed by five girls. I know, know. I have no idea how it happened. My school toys bin started out as Brio train tracks with lots of accessories. When the shift to more and more girls happened, they added more things. The girls have dress up clothes. We have always had a very large bin of Megabloks that comes out at the same time. Babies often need small things that they can play with, too, but they are often don’t need them to be special the way toddlers and preschoolers need them to be. The youngest of my eleven children is three right now but when I still had babies, they always had a basket of things.

Secondly, the best way to keep the younger children under control and happy while you do school is the have someone older with them. I always schedule my children in half hour blocks to do their “babysitting turn”. It does not have to be stressful. In my notebook, I keep chart that is a list of all the older kid’ names down the side and a space to write dates across the top. As I go through my day, each child has to take a turn with the younger children and once they have done their turn, I put a check next to their name so that I know who had already gone. It is tempting to have some kids babysit more than others but everyone both needs to do school and learn how to take care of younger children. I try to plan it so that kids who are more reliable students start babysitting so I can make sure that the ones who are less reliable have me with them to make sure they get their work done. You can use a timer on your phone or on the oven or any other timer. Switching the kids out regularly makes sure that they kids never get tired of the babysitter.

Lastly, I think it is really important to segregate the learners. I group the older kids (who often listen to music with headphones while they study) and the younger kids who need a lot of talking back and forth to do their school work. This means that the youngest ones and the babysitter need to be elsewhere and not mingled in with the other children. If you keep everyone together, this means that you will have more interruptions and more frustrated teenagers who need to do a lot of reading. Carving out space does not need to be tricky. I have ten children at home still and we live in a 1640 sqft house. Center study areas around the dinner table, a coffee table, even a picnic table on the patio. Wherever a child sit, they can learn.

Daily Check-In Time

I have another list in my notebook that consists of a daily check in with my children. Every day they need to sit next to me and go through their work and get help and have questions answered and concepts taught so that they can move on. I make a check-list of names and any notes on things I need to check. It might look like below:

Maria 11/15·         Math: Differential Equations, stuck on lesson 12
·         Eng: Paragraph check in
·         Vocab: flash cards made?

Just keep a list of subject and make sure there is a dividing line down the center of the paper. Then keep what you need to check on one side and what needs to done the next day on the column next to it. Then you can keep the dates over the column. At the end of the day, you can transfer (no more than a half sheet, from top to bottom), of instructions into each child’s notebook. They know that you will check those items and they need to be responsible for checking them off. Once they are in fifth grade or so, make them responsible for copying it over. You have enough to do.

Grading

I used to have each child grade the English and Math of the child down in the level below their own. Now that I use Khan math, it means that they have less to grade. I like Khan because I get a weekly email that lets me know how many minutes they have spent and in what areas and where they are succeeding and where they are have problems. The children need to do 300 minutes of math a week but the upper limit is 400 (yes, I have kids who need that limit). If anyone does not get his minutes in, he gets to clean the bathroom. If you are using workbooks or texts for math, ask the child grading the work to help a younger child work through the problem. If they can correct it together, I do not count it as wrong. Helping someone learn a skill helps both children.

I can take a look at the work during the daily check ins but I also only have children do math and reading on the first Friday of the month to give me a chance to really look at where each kid is in each subject. I put on a movie and the kids come up one at a time and we really look at everything so I can make sure that each child is making the progress that they need to make. This is a great time to keep track of the reading list for high school kids. Work on their transcripts at the end of each and every semester so that it is not a gargantuan task at the end of high school.

Also, a big tip: flashcards. If it can go on flashcards, do it. I have cut apart vocab books and used them to make flashcards. The children have to make a flashcards for every term in every chapter in the science books. Group kids as much as possible and have them quiz each other every day. I check that the flashcards are made and then I quiz them weekly in groups. I go through hundreds of index cards a year and we have boxes and boxes of them. You can often use them with younger kids who do not have to go through the process of making them for themselves.(Almost) Free curriculum. Score.

Interruptions

All of my children have their own pad of colored or decorative Post-It notes. I love these things. If they have a question, and I am busy, they have to write that question down. It might look like this: Math, lesson 6, #14. They are to come put it on my notebook and not interrupt. I know immediately who needs me and what they need help with and they do not need to tell me and disturb me. This happens when I am helping a child with school, or making lunch, or changing a diaper, or even using the bathroom.

When they come to a place where they can’t solve a problem or answer a question, they are told that they skip that are and keep going. Just skip it. If it means going to the next subject, fine. They need to keep going. Now, if they have nothing else to do, then they need to work on their “Just Right Book”, that is a book they can read with no help whatsoever, or a smaller project. In the kids notebooks, I keep an area for a list of things that they need to do that are open ended like practice classical guitar, practice tying shoes, working on a model, or things of that nature. This means that they keep busy and can even account for their time when I get back to them.

When I have something that they need to get to, I write it on my Post-its. When they seem them on the first page of their notebooks, they know they need to do it. I will often post chores and things like that. By the way, there should always be a punishment attached to losing or destroying these notes. Something productive but unpleasant like rinsing out garbage cans or changing the cat litter.

Nap Time

If you have younger children or babies then someone needs a daily nap; sometimes it’s mom. So, after lunch, we have quiet time. This is a time when everyone needs to quietly read a book. I do not care if you are fifteen. Too bad. This hour is sacred. Little ones go down with an audiobook or a CD. If someone is inclined to ask repeatedly if they can get up, my solution is a CD about an hour long. When it is over, you can get up. If they fall asleep, great. Anyone who is disruptive during this time loses privileges. I have been known to give the good children ice cream at the end of the day in order to teach a child to not misbehave at this time of the day. My children know that I am dead serious about this.

End of the Day Ritual

One of the most important things that I learned about a decade in, is that we just need to stop at some point, even if we were unproductive. You will lack the strength to keep going if you don’t take breaks. We have a set time to stop every day and I don’t go more than half an hour over it. Then we have tea. We stop and have tea and put things away. It helps us switch gears. I think having a ritual is so important because we need to remind ourselves that this is behind us. Now we can be a wife and mother and not a teacher. That said, children might still need to finish work.

We have what we call “Stay Up Late Time”, which is the evening when we play games, watch movies, and things like that. If you are an older child, and what that means is flexible, then you might need to spend finishing thing you did not do during the day. Didn’t write that paragraph? See you later.

Final Thoughts

If there is nothing else that I can impart, I think the most important thing I can say is to remember that sometimes you need to be off. If you are always schooling, always thinking about school, running long days because your morning was unproductive, then you are going to feel strained and stressed. I have done that far too many times. Treat it like a job and be there all day but end it and leave it behind. Get up in the morning and get going as if you were going to a job. At the end of the day, leave it behind. You might not like getting up and staying on task but really, you will be so grateful if you do because you will be able to stop in the afternoon. There are a few ways to make that easier.

• Put an out-going message on your machine saying that you are unavailable during the day and that you will return calls after 3 or so.
• Put your phone on silent and only check social media during lunch and after school.
• If you really need to be available to certain people during the day, use a special ring tone or a “push app” so that they can always reach you without being available to everyone.
• If you have close neighbors with children who interrupt during school, put up a sign. Yes, I have done this. If you just print up something with some pictures that looks school like, even non-readers can understand it. Laminate it or cover it with clear Contact paper and use a hole punch and ribbon to make something that can hang from the knob.
• More on signs: when I was a kid my mother had signs like this for dinner time and chore time. It hung outside and our friends knew that we were not available until the sign came off the door. This is another great tip.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any

great tips or ideas or even questions I can answer.