Email of the Day:
Can you work full time and homeschool? How do you make that work, especially with small children?
Answer:
Lots of people manage to do this in lots of different ways.
Some people split shifts so the parents rarely see each other, but someone’s always at home with the kidlets.
Some add a grandparent or nanny into the mix.
Some work from home, and split their time between their work and homeschooling.
Many do a lot of their homeschooling in the evenings and on weekends as well as some of the day time hours.
Almost all of them homeschool “year-around.”
I’ve known a couple of single parents who work fulltime and homeschool. As far as I can tell, those folks never sleep, but that seems to be true of most single parents.
I do this math:
There’s 5,840 waking hours in a year (if we assume you sleep a full 8 a night). That’s enough for two full time jobs + the 1,000 hours of homeschooling and still have 840 hours left for eating, showering, etc. (840 is not enough hours to do these things, commute, and remain sane. I do not encourage this as a lifestyle choice).
In school, the 1,000 hours looks like 180 days that are 5.5 hours long. The 1,000 hours includes ever recess, every lunch, every line up, every class bell hall change, every field trip, field day, pep rally, assembly, every time the teacher gave up and put in a video, every day the teacher didn’t leave something and the sub gave up and put in a video, every time Johnny’s pencil wasn’t sharp and Susy couldn’t find her book . . . all of that is included in the school’s 1,000 hours.
This is why most people, even those who do a very schooly-looking set curriculum, are done in a few hours in the morning.
Hey, folks in the working-and-homeschooling trenches — how do you work this one out at your house?
~Jen