I am trying to gget more organized for my sanity and my kids' sanity. Thus far, I haven't had any type of schedule for our work, and it's just not working. I admit that.

How do you organize your day? Do you insert housework into the day between studies? Do you have a section of the house that is off limits during the 'school day'?

I have avoided doing this, but I am wondering if maybe it would help us all feel better about the work that we do. I get distracted very easily, so I have a difficult time blocking out the messon the floor when we are sitting on the couch reading. Or when the kids are sitting around the table needing my help wth some math work... I have a difficult time blocking out the fact that there are dishes and the floor is disgusting. I am not a neat freak - but this stuff easily distracts me from helping my children.

We have a set of 3 rooms in the front of the house. one is our main livingroom, with comfy couch, piano, etc. The other room has the computer, short table with kid chairs, their toys, etc. Then there is the kitchen. This is all pretty open. I am considering just allowing the kids to be in this area of the house during our school hours and keeping a tighter schedule. We can do our reading (which we do a lot of reading) in the livngroom on the comfy couch and comfy chairs. The short table can be used for writing work and math - or we could also use the kitchen table. All of our homeschool supplies are in the room with the short table and in the kitchen. But... how do I keep myself and my kids from being distractd by the other house crap?

Austin is also easily distracted, so this is a huge issue for him. He has a difficult time concentrating on any type of work because of hte other stuff going on around him. We don't have a tv in the livingroom, so that won't be an issue, either. And if Adam and Lauren want to watch one of their story book videos (love those scholastic books on DVD) we can put them in the back livingroom with the tv there and they would be out of the way and not distracting Austin and Nate and me.

Also... getting dressed is a huge issue, too. I am thinking abut getting some navy and khaki pants for the boys and some different colored polo shirts so that they can wear those for 'school'. I am wondering if we dress for it, they might be more apt to be cooperative? And I am NOT a school at home type of person. So this is what is holding me back. I want to be laid back and relaxed, but yet, I think my kids need the structure of a schedule and seeing that from this time until this time we concentrate on our work. Austin is 3/4th grade now, so for him this is becoming more of an issue. Nathan is 2nd grade and loves to work - but I think he needs to know boundaries in regards to time, too.

Any ideas? I am really trying ot work out our frustrations before I completely just send them all to military school far far away. (bwhahahahaha)

Are house is small so we don't have it broken up into specific areas. Our downstairs is 600 sq ft and very boxy rooms. School is done in the dining room; I use my china cabinet as school central. The top shelf is used for my pretties and the two other open shelves along with the shelves behind clothes doors are used for containing hs materials as well.

I love lists, however I can not make a list for my routines. I have fouind that when I have a paper that says I have to do "x" at a certain time I become a slave to the paper. I am a neat person by nature so I don't really have to schedule cleaning times anyhow.

How do you organize your day? Do you insert housework into the day between studies? Do you have a section of the house that is off limits during the 'school day'?

When we wake up, the first thing everyone does is their "morning chart". They have photo charts that are laminated. The kids have to clean their room, make beds, get dressed, brush teeth, and do 1 morning chore like empty trash cans. I usually strongly suggest that they not come out of their room until it's clean with beds made and they are dressed (unless they have to go to the bathroom). They are really good about getting their chart done. But when we started, they were super slow and grumpy about it. Soooo mean horrible mom that I am, I told them they had 1/2 and hour to get it done and if it wasn't done by the time the timer went off, they'd miss breakfast. It only took once or twice of having to miss out on breakfast before I had better cooperation in the mornings (I didn't make them wait until lunch to eat, just until morning snack around 9:30 or 10, which for a hungry 8 year old is loong enough). After breakfast I give them about 15 minutes to themselves to do whatever they want while I do breakfast dishes. Then we get started with school, it's usually about 9-9:30 by the time we start.

I have a difficult time blocking out the fact that there are dishes and the floor is disgusting.

When Bryce was Kinder we did school in the kitchen. I hated it! I had the exact same issues you said. It made me nuts if there were dishes in the sink and a dirty floor. Sooo I put a costco conference table in my family room up against the wall. It turned out to work perfectly. We did school there, the kids could color play, games etc... there when we weren't doing school work. It wasn't pretty but I didn't care. Just a few weeks ago I got a new kitchen table, so I put the old kitchen table in there instead.

I am considering just allowing the kids to be in this area of the house during our school hours and keeping a tighter schedule. Austin is also easily distracted, so this is a huge issue for him.

I think that's a great idea. We pretty much do that, Marlie wanders a bit, but mostly stays with us in the family room. As far as clutter goes, can you try to have everyone help you clean it up before they go to bed so that it's clean in the am? I don't let the kids play with toys in the family room/living room on school mornings. I give them a short break after breakfast, but then we get right to school, so there's not a chance to make a mess in the "common areas".

I also put a school desk in my bedroom for Bryce this past year. It's *his*desk, all of his workbooks, spelling, reader, things he can do on his own are in there. He has an excell spreadsheet that I copy off for him that tells him what to do each day. After family bible time, we goes to his desk and gets started on his independent work. I check on him every 10-15 minutes. He's allowed to work on my bed with a clipboard, or his desk, but he sticks mostly to the desk. I didn't think the desk would work, to keep him focused. I though he would be upset closed up in my room. I though he'd wander around etc...But he didn't and once he figured out how much faster he worked in there and how much quicker we were done with school, he loved it. I explain his math in there, and even Language Arts. Then I give him the worksheet to finish. The trickiest part was leaving Blake every 15 minutes to check on Bryce. but Blake is much more of a self starter, so he actaully kept working while I would disappear for a few minutes.


Also... getting dressed is a huge issue, too. I am thinking abut getting some navy and khaki pants for the boys and some different colored polo shirts so that they can wear those for 'school'.

I have a friend who actually buys uniforms at Target for her girls. I thought it was wierd at first, but I can see her point that it helps her girls stay focused and remember that it's school time. Is it that he dosen't want to get dressed or that he hates picking out clothes. I started having my kids lay out their clothes at night (even shoes) and it helps a ton. Even Marlie dosen't fuss about what she wears now. She just picks it up off the ground and puts it on.




And I am NOT a school at home type of person. So this is what is holding me back. I want to be laid back and relaxed, but yet, I think my kids need the structure of a schedule and seeing that from this time until this time we concentrate on our work.

I wasn't a school at home person either. But it took having an awful year last year with bryce to figure out that maybe I wasn't a school at home person, but maybe HE was. With a strong schedule, he has done much better. I think a lot of our problem was my scatterbrainedness (is that a word??LOL) I think many people (especially online) but a lot of pressue on each other to be laidback with school. It's taken me a while to figure out, that not all kids thrive in that environment.

I've been trying to use Flylady again. It's helping get me organized so I can get my schedules more organized. Maybe it would help you too??

Oh and about housework...I sometimes do laundry during school times, but I find that it's really distracting so usually I don't. Most of my cleaning I do on Mondays when my sister comes to be my mothers helper. It's amazing what I can get done when a 14 year old comes and helps for 2 hours :)

Kelly, I swear we are sharing a life! lol

And you are right... I may not be a school at home person, but I think Austin might do better if I did more scheduling, etc.

I did set up a desk in his bedroom just last week. Other than the desk, the only thing in the bedroom is their dresser and bunk beds, so not a lot of distraction. He can choose to work out in the common area or go to his room to work at his desk.

have I mentioned that I hate not having dh here? He used to help out so much. sigh....

:rub: Heather, I wish your dh was there too. My dh was working 20 hour days all of June and most of July. It was horrible. Sometimes we don't realize how much help they are until they are gone. I really tighted up the reigns while he was gone. I don't think the kids knew what hit them LOL. We had to work like a well oiled machine or nothing got done. LOL and yes, our lives often sound quite parallel! funny isn't it??

Try making the desk *his*, put a lable with his name on it, put his books in it, his pencil box on top of it etc...Once Bryce realized that it was *his* space and no one was allowed to use it but him, he gravated towards it.

I know you talked about babysitters...What about having a regular sitter or mothers helper come? It's so wonderful during the school year knowing that between 1 and 3 I have some help, even if it's only 2 hours.

And another thing. I just started using this site www.savingdinner.com to help with meal planning. I signed up for the frugal menu for 3 months. I was afraid that no one would like the dinners (my kids can be picky), but I got to a point where I didn't care. I needed help with scheduling my life and to have a menu and a shopping list appear in my email box every Tuesday sounded like heaven. So far so good. I try to keep some dinner things seperate (like I don't put sauce on all of the chicken etc...). I get dinner done so much faster, it's really been nice.

Oh and if you want to see Bryce's excell schedule to get an idea of how it works, I can email it to you.

Kelly, Please email it to me. :)

I have one I started and used a couple of times, but I think it could be better. Always nice to see someone else's ideas. :)

3boysnagirl @ adelphia dot net Thanks a ton!

Duh! I forgot about chore charts. Each of my girls have a chore chart that they must follow everyday. They get up at 7 am and can watch tv until 7:30. This gives them time to wake up and me to check my email. ;) At 7:30 I get breakfast ready. Nothing fancy here: cereal, grits, oatmeal, cream of wheat or turkey bacon with toast are usually the options.

After breakfast they have to do their chores, get dressed and brush their teeth. Then, we start school.

I have found that running a load of laundry at night (before I go to bed) is the best way to get laundry going. In the morning, I let the dog out and throw the clothes in the dryer. I then put them away sometime during that day. I try to get them right when the buzzer goes off so we don't have wrinkled clothing.

Another good menu planner can be found here (http://www.menus4moms.com/kitchen/weeklymenu/2005/july/050725.php). I usually do only half of the meal suggestions they offer. I love to cook but hate to make menus. :rolleyes:

I'm thinking maybe we need a schedule too. My son has told me several times that i wants to start school at 8:00 so I'm thinking maybe I'll try that. It also seems if I let him go and play that I can't get him to come back. Any suggestions for that? (LOL) I had purchased managers of their homes and I'm thinking of loosely doing that. I don't think I want everything scheduled out and I don't want to rush him if he needs more time, but it might be good to set a pace. Good luck

Andrew thrives on a schedule and routine as well. I do a lot of things similar to Kelly. The biggest help for DS this last year and starting this year is having his "Own" Schedule. He works well when he knows exactly what needs to be done ahead of time.

If you do uniforms, The Children's Place had a nice Uniform section.

We do almost all of our school work in the living room. As the boys get bigger they may be more comfortable at the kitchen table, but for now the coffee table works well. We're Waldorf-inspired homeschoolers, so there aren't a lot of worksheets, work books etc.

Here's a sample of how our Monday would flow. We're on break right now, and we've added in more things now that we'll be doing grade 1 instead of kindergarten, so it's a bit hypothetical, but you'll get the idea:

Daily Flow for a Monday

Wake up and meditate
Check email and update Quicken
Get dressed, wake boys and have them dress
Breakfast – make it, eat it, and clean up
Everyone brushes teeth
Morning walk with boys
Circle time
Morning main lesson
Snack
Bake together
Boys play while I do some household tasks
Lunch – make it (boys still playing), eat it, and clean up
Quiet time
Afternoon lesson – practice and games
Boys play while I exercise and do early dinner prep (can assist if they want to)
Tea and story time
Recorder
Dinner – make it (boys play or help), eat it, and clean up
Help boys clean room
Go for a family walk
PJs, story time, brush teeth, sing, bedtime for boys
Make bread (breadmaker)
Financial planning
Get ready for bed, read, lights out for mama

Kimberly