Single mom and home schooling

Hi, and welcome!

I am a working homeschooling mom.  I work 5 days a week 9-noon.  I have two boys finishing up 2nd and 5th grades.  This was our first year homeschooling.  I’ve been very nervous about how it was all going to play out while working, and still am as they get older and need to spend more time on studies.  I am working on strategies to help them be more independent in their studies during the morning and try to keep our afternoons to 2 hours.  They come with me to the office, so I like them to be productive as possible during the three hours they are there.  My younger is struggling more with staying on task and accomplishing everything without my direct supervision, but I expected that where he has ADHD. 

Starting out you will not need to spend more than maybe an hour to hour and a half each day teaching your son.  Your focus will be on the basics of math, reading and writing and anything else he learns will come to him through the stories you read, what he observes in the world around him and what he experiences on a day-to-day basis through interaction and play. 

Not all school work needs to be done at a particular time of day or even in one lump.  For example, you could designate three 20 minute blocks of time thoughout the day — one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the evening.  20 min doesn’t work in the morning?  No problem, find another part of your day that does, or split it up a bit more so you have two 10 min chunks and two 20 min chunks.  Take advantage of “wasted” time like waiting for appointments by taking along a back pack of things to do, like story books, a small tin of magetic letters, a small white board and markers, etc.  Play games like “I spy” for observation and recognition skills (“I spy something that starts with the letter B” or “I spy a number 7, can you find it?”).  Also, story books on CD are great for when you are travelling in a vehicle.

Don’t be stuck with the idea that you need to school from Mon-Fri, Sept to June.  Learning can be done just as easily, and sometimes easier, on the weekends or in the summer.  You might save your nature walks or art projects for Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons.   As he gets older you might choose to do Science in the spring and summer, and history through the fall and winter.  You may need to get creative with your time, and it won’t necessarily be easy, but you can do this, no doubts. 

I’m a single mom too but only work two 12 hour days plus occasional hour or two here or there for a private client. My thought would be to take the hour you have in the morning & use at least part of that time to teach a few lessons. If using CM, maybe do a short lesson each in math, history (history/bible/geography if using the SCM guides) & copywork for example then have your mom (if she’s keeping him) take him out for nature walks, let him draw from those walks then maybe look up online, in field guides, etc. interesting things related to the nature walk, read a variety of living books to him or have him read some to her since he is reading and/or she could easily do the composer/music or artist studies plus she could teach him some great handicraft if she has a particular skill you would like her to pass to him. I’m not sure how long of hours you are working but it would be easy to fit in literature reads & scripture memory plus something else in the afternoon, at dinner time & bedtime. I’d not really worry that you will have time to teach him all he needs especially since he is bright & already reading…you are putting enough out there following something like the SCM curriculum guide that you can keep lots of good books around, give him some self-directed activities to build math & reading further, etc, & I’m sure he will progress beautifully. The hard part for me is not the time to teach…it’s the keeping the house manageable, grocery shopping, running errands, etc that is so hard b/c my girls are little & it is me, myself & I 24/7 except when I work (which no time to shop during breaks at work or on way home after working such a long shift…exhausted, have to get the kids or get home to get up early the next morning for work). So you might want to figure out how to juggle these things as it is hard to school when the house is too much of a mess or you don’t know what meal to put on the table b/c you haven’t been grocery shopping recently…lol! I wish you the best & am sure everything will fall into place for you with a little planning : )

I work part-time, but am self employed so have some amount of flexibility.  This past year things got really difficult with time demands – I have a hard time transitioning from work to home to schoolwork… more so than the kids LOL.  My kids also stay with my mom while I am at work, usually two days per week.  Toward the end of the year, something had to give.  Three days of school time per week was just not enough.  I started having them do some kind of computer practice each day at my mom’s – typing, math facts, reading practice.  It somehow made things easier – something was getting done on those “off” days.  I also found I had to take steps to streamline our household management in order to cope.  I made some drastic decluttering choices that have paid off in time savings – primarily in the kitchen and kids clothes area.  I am hoping to continue to refine these changes going into the next school year in the fall.

Hope that helps!

At age 4 1/2, you have at least a year, if not two, before you need to do any formal ‘school’ with him.  So you have time to develop routines and figure out how to work more formal studies in.  Both my DD6 and DS (5 next week) have been very early readers, so I know it’s tempting to start full blown ‘school’, but there is really no need to do very much.  CM emphasized waiting until at least age 6 before doing anything very structured.

To give you an idea of how little time it can take, here’s what my DS5 does for school.  He wouldn’t even do all of this yet (like the Spanish and the Science) if he didn’t have a big sister to tag along with.

Morning Family studies (all children, ages 2, 4, 5, and 6, four days a week):  Devotional, sing a hymn, recite scripture memory verses, read a poem, and an Early Years level story or two.  Then we alternate a Spanish Video with lessons from 106 Days of Creation.  Total Time: less than 45 minutes (slightly more on Spanish days).  We also do an artist study for a couple of minutes once a week and listen to composers during lunch, and practicing using our Spanish vocabulary as we eat.

Afternoon work (4 days a week):  DS5 practices printing numerals for about 3-5 minutes.  This is all he can tolerate.  Fine motor skills are NOT his thing, but he is into math, and wants to learn the numbers.  We buddy read a story for about 10 minutes (alternating one page each of short chapter books).  Then we often play a math card game, or a game like battleship or dominoes, or he has some educational computer games he can play for a little while each day.  We also ‘talk math’ often throughout the day, as this is his thing.  Later we read a bedtime story or two, and then DS reads to himself for a while.

On the fifth day we do nature study such as taking a walk in the river valley, or a nature oriented field trip (zoo, nature centre, etc.)  He doesn’t have the drawing skills to keep a nature journal, so I just have each child find something to ‘notice’ each week.  Other than that we focus on LOTS of time outdoors, learning habits, and helping around the house.

You could easily fit all of that into the schedule you described, especially if your mom is able to help do things like read stories and take a nature walk together.  And that would be on top of the preschool, which is all the ‘school’ most 4 year olds do anyway.

Don’t overload yourself or your son!  Just ease into it.  With my DD6 we started one or two new subjects each month for about 6 months until we had the full program going.  She still only does the 45 minutes of family studies in the morning and about 45 minutes more in the afternoon, 4 days a week.  It really doesn’t take that much time at this level.

Have fun!

Joanne