Homeschooling Schedule or Over-schedule

It is hard to imagine when you first choose to homeschool that you can become too busy. No one mentions this as a problem when you first consider homeschooling. Most people warn you of seclusion and isolating your children. Clearly the people that say this have never homeschooled. When we first started homeschooling five years ago, we fell into this trap. And since most homeschool classes / activities are not held in one place at one time, but instead are spread miles apart and are limited only to the spaces in your calendar, we were busier than we ever were in public school. After about 18 months, working slowly started to trim down our schedule. For the most part we ceased doing purely “homeschooling” activities, but instead remained very active in Scouts and church and continued to do interesting things as a family. When we would run into our old homeschooling friends, I would hear how much they all missed us. I missed them too, but I did not miss the craziness, that is part of what I was trying to get away from. When I left work in April, our family finally seemed to meet a reasonable homeschool regular schedule. I’m not implying that the last five years were not reasonable. We did make it through, but that was exactly it: Every day we made it through. Finally, after leaving work, life was calmer and we could better get through their studies and include some fun activities.

Anyway, last week we went to a Not Back to School Picnic with our regular group. It was so good to see everyone and get caught up . . . but, I could see it happening again. “Would you like to . . . ““We have . . . .” “We can make room for you . . .” Whoa, whoa, whoa, I wanted to scream. Let’s enjoy our time together. We’ll probably see each other more (at least until we move), but I like not having to do something every day. I like being able to go with my husband instead of being chained to my calendar (I have enough appointments that already do that).

So I warn you that are new to homeschooling: Beware of the minute / hour steeling activity overload. The activities can be very tempting, but you may soon find yourself spinning. For those of you that already homeschool, I empower you to say, “No thank you. We already have an appointment that day,” knowing that your appointment is with yourself and your kids.