Disarray in our homeschool

This week’s Blog Cruise is a loaded question. “How do you organize your homeschool?”

Honestly, I can see 2 different directions for the post to take. There’s the literal organization of the home and all areas where school happens. Then, there is the organization of your homeschool day.

Since I’m not sure which was originally meant, I’ll quickly tackle both!

I’ve posted in the past that we have a ‘school room.’ When we lived in Ohio, the school room was a section of the basement I had carved out for us to work. We had a good sized chalkboard surrounded by library bookshelves, all salvaged from old schools by hubby. I still miss those shelves and the chalkboard (and other things about that house and friends in the area.) Most of our work was done there, but we did do some subjects as a group upstairs.

For the first few months in Maryland, we had a much smaller school space in the ‘den’ of the rented townhouse. Most work was done there, but occasionally a boy would take his upstairs for more quiet.

Then, the somewhat dedicated school space continued in the rented house we had in Maryland. We often overflowed into a neighboring bedroom when boys needed some physical separation or went upstairs for some things as well. You can see a previous post with photos here.

Now we are back to having school room space that also serves as play space and storage in our Alaskan home. I snapped a few photos in a previous post. Even though the room is LARGE (bigger than the common space upstairs), it seems like the boys still need some physical separation. I’m always amazed at how the simple act of breathing can be distracting to some children. Throw in a fussy baby, and, well, you get the picture!

That’s a quick blurb on the physical organization. Now onto the ‘time management’ issue….

And, for this I have to say I need a major overhaul!

Last fall we were cruising rather well with workboxes. And, I want to get back to them, but didn’t get it all together when school work needed to start. Maybe when we are back in Alaska I’ll pull it together.

But, for now, I am using my ‘age old’ student checklist. I use Homeschool Tracker Plus to do the assignments for the week and each kid gets a print out of their assignments. Some subjects (namely history and science) are done as a group for now. But, others are at each child’s level. With P in 8th grade I am already on the verge of a nervous breakdown over the workload for this mama! Three boys at three different levels with three different abilities when it comes to independent learning make for a challenge. Then there’s the baby demanding attention. Well, you get the picture….I’m thinking a long soak in the tub sounds like a good idea at 10 in the morning.

I do have a copy of Managers of Their Homes in the house.  I am thinking it needs to be sold and passed onto someone who will benefit from the wisdom it contains.  I like the theory, but can’t bring myself to do a schedule.  Well, nothing beyond getting up at a reasonable hour, doing some schoolwork, having lunch, doing more schoolwork, fixing dinner, and then going out for evening activities.

Maybe you could say between the boxes in the school space, the toys that wander about as boys forget to pick them up, and the lack of a firm schedule, our homeschool is more disarray than organized.

If you’re interested in how other Crewmates tackled this week’s question, click on the Blog Cruise button come Tuesday morning and check out their posts.  I, for one, am looking forward to getting ideas so my house will feel a little more settled in the future.