How do you seperate the schooling from everyday living?

Okay, I know homeschooling is a way of life. Now I feel as if it is controlling my life. I am trying to find a balance, yet it is hard. I always have school on my mind, then it is all over the house. Every where you look there is something. Now I love hsling, yet I don't want it to take over like it has. How do you find a happy balance?

 

hmmmm, thats a good question Joanna, because it's in every room of my house too.
I don't know how to live other wise been doing it for so long it seem normal to me.
Maybe I am not normal I don't know.

 

I think it is hard for everyone. I know it is a little easier because we have a study that we do homeschool in. Having a separate space really helps me out.

 

I don't even think about keeping different parts of our lives separate. Relatives, church, friends, learning, work, play are all woven together into what makes us a family. As far as the homeschool "stuff", that would be fighting a losing battle to try to contain it to one area around here. I guess, for us, that is our happy balance. Beth

 

I really don't try to seperate it. To me, learning is constantly happening, so we are constantly "schooling". One of the reasons I'd have a hard time teaching in a more controlling state, where everything has to be recorded and compartmentalized.

 

We don't.. it's part of our lifestyle now. Learning never stops even if formal schooling does. That said I do have one room where I keep all the books and stuff.

 

For me, the balance is weaving in my own enjoyments and interests in this tapestry of home and life, so that I don't feel there a need to separate homeschooling from other things; so that when I look at my home and feel homeschooling is taking over it gives me pleasure because I associate it with other things I like also.

Now, if you mean that your home is feeling cluttered with homeschool materials and books, then I can relate with that to some extent. If that is it, it is time to organize things so you don't have that feeling. I reorganize at least once a year, sometimes two or three times, and this is a good time to do it, when back-to-school sales as going on with all sorts of storage items on sale.

 

Jo Annna I have been trying to figure that out for years, I think now that I am down to one it may be easier, but homeschooling is a lifestyle not just a job, the best advice I have is to set a time of the day that the kids have to pick up and put away school.
For summer I used to turn shelves back wards when they were younger, and stuff that had to do with school was out of my sight so I could relaz, otherwise I am always planning what to do next.

 

Well to me , what you are asking can be 2 different questions at once.

1.) Are you always thinking about school, as in ...this would be great and educational for my kids or I need that for school ( when looking at a magazine or store aisle).

2.) Or is it clutter? Projects in different rooms , books in different places , no place for records?

I think maybe its both?

I know that after 9 years of homeschooling I can seperate it , some what.

Here are my tips for help with clutter:

I don't have a seperate space anymore for homeschooling ( I did have a schoolroom at my last house) so I have different book shelves for my dd's and for me.
All of my bookcases have doors at the bottom. Behind 2 sets of doors is all my dd's books ( workbooks, text books) and their supplies ( so 1 bookcase per girl) , the other bookcase is mine. All of my teacher books, lesson plan books and extra supplies ( paper, pencils, etc) are in it.
The upper shelves on all of the bookcases hold reference books, reading books and my go to homeschooling books. They are broken up into subjects , like all History is together, Science in one place , etc.
My hall closet now holds board games, posters ( that I rotate on the hall walls), science project supplies and craft supplies. Everything is in one place , easy for everyone to find.
One wall in my hallway (next to the supply closet) I have a chalkboard ( to list assignments for the week and project deadlines), a world map and fun school room type posters.
On the other wall is my message center and calendar ( to help keep track of all of their activities).

My other trick is that each girl has a basket ( plastic from the $ store) that holds each days work and pencil boxes ( no more .. Mom I need to get a different pencil or sharpner). One might work at the dinner table and one on the couch but everything stays with them, so clean up is easy.
Big projects are done on folding card tables so they are easy to move out of the way.

Now if you need help with always thinking about school well that is harder.

I have become very picky about activities, events and schoolbooks over the years.
The first 3 years I bought everything I could and did everything I deemed "educational".
Now , a little wiser, I think in terms of if this will benefit my kids in a few years and/or is this something they want to do. I ask them if they want to take this class or that and I rarely push them to do something they don't want to do ( why waste the money).

As for materials , I really look at it and see if it isn't something I already have or is it something I really will be teaching them. The other question is : do we really need to buy this or can I get it at the library?
I have saved to ton of money over the years by just asking myself these questions and truely following my children's passions.

It really is hard to seperate it but sometimes its good to do that. I don't want everything we do to or buy to be about its educational benefit.

 

I have found that for many homeschoolers, the first four or five years seems to be the "transformation process", from caterpillar into butterfly is what I liken it to.

Unless we live in a state like Jackie mentions that is more regulated, it is usually after this time that we get a better balance on our schedule, time and house.

Having it consume a lot of our time is so VERY normal at the beginning until we find a "groove" that fits our family.

We do find a better balance in "scheduling academics" and then realize that so many other things happen "naturally' like the big S (sociliazation, Pe, ARt and Bible).

It seems you are experiencing a very normal part of the journey!

You WILL control it!! and it feels good!! Stay after it!!

 

My kids have all their school stuff in cubbies in our dinning room (most of the time), but right now, we are getting ready for fall and I have everything all over 2 rooms in my house. It's driving my dh crazy! I don't think there is a good way to keep it seperate. When I think back to when I was in school, I know that when my siblings and I came home we ended up having our school stuff strewn throughout the house. Since we homeschool I just realize that instead of having the school stuff strewn throughout the house when my kids get home, it is strewn about 24/7.

 

Learning is a part of life for us. With that said, "book work" isn't. Book work is scheduled around our daily lives. We do not plan our lives around book work.

 

If you figure it out Let us know. I don't know how it can be done; when you truely care and want the best for your children. Even I, am always learning.

 

It is not the learning part. That is part of our daily lives also, it is like right now. I am looking at my living room and well I see book shelves full of books, cubbies, shelves, and all kinds of other stuff that is everywhere. Not really a mess it is more like if you open a drawer, cupboard, or look on a shelf you are going to find something of the sort. Like I ran out of room and have to use the hall closet and now the board games are in the living room on a shelf.

I am trying to find the happy medium between the I guess you would say bookwork, and home. I look at all the schooling stuff and I start the "oh I need to read more on this, or plan more on that", I do this all the time. I feel as if it is because I am constantly staring at it (books and such). I would love to confine all the stuff to one room, but it just doesn't seem to work out that way.

I just feel smothered sometimes. I guess this is normal. Dh says I let the planning and such consume way too much of my life. Yet I don't know where to draw the line.

Did any of that make any sense? I hope so.

 

Jo anna you could try , if you have the funds, to get an armoir style of desk and use it, we are trying to totaly condense and get rid of stuff now too, cause same here, everwhere you go there is school in our home, evenn the living room that is usually 'off limits wiht out permission " is the reading area for quiet reading and Bible class. lol.
I get frustrated with it from time to time but then I remember this too shall pass.
At one time we were going to move school to the garage , but that got no where when wehad to park the 67 Mustang in there lol.
We tried to keep it in one room, I took it out of the kitchen totally, thenn the table is used when school is on now but not always.
Of course the CSPAN Gigantic American Presidents TImeline up on the wall of our family room kind of reminds me continuously of the school things ,
I really think its a matter of having a room solely for school and everything returns there at 3 daily or you just give in and accept it as a way of life.

 

Do you mean you do it too much? My first year of homeschooling, we went through close to 2 yrs worth of curriculum. Some moms from the homeschool group told me to step back, take a break, so on. They were right. After the break, we started back up in June. But this time, I did not allow myself to assign more than a certain amount in a certain amount of time. That worked better. Now I will look at a book and say 300 pages for example. I have 9 months. I want to do no more than 40 pages in a month. That keeps me from overdoing it each day. Then I resort to side stuff like crafts and science experiments and such..or chores. Those same moms told me to use the extra time to train the children in chores, cooking, etc. They were right. I have noticed many public schoolers who never do chores and cannot cook or do yard work, etc. Or free reading, or let them explore their interests. I think it is best when we do not lead too much.

 

Oh gosh JoAnna, our home is soooo full of "school" it's not even close to funny! We live in a small home.. it's a 14X70 3 bedroom mobile... here are our rooms... kitchen ~has posters on the walls and sometimes on the cabnet doors and fridge too, hutch bottom is our craft cabnet, coat closet shelf is school storage, bottom drawer has school supplies; living room ~ has a stack of 5 drawers full of school things (these are wonderfully brightly colored I must add), 2 book shelves loaded with school goodies, a stack of cubes of school things, the computer amoire full of school, on top is our board games which most are school related ('smath, gramopoly, diploma dogs, etc), chalkboard on wall, alphabet strips on wall; hall way ~ has 4 bookselves over flowing, could use 2 or 3 more, going to be running a time line down the wall soon!; Garrett's room ~ a huge collection of National Geographic magazines we got off of free cycle, his own books shelf, desk and computer, sometimes there are posters on his walls as well; the littles' room ~ my case(s) of paper get stored under their bunk beds, sometimes other things are in their closet that I have no where else to put at the time, they would have to store more in there but they are quite destructive to things at this point; our room ~ a tote and crate of extra school supplies, lots of books and other odds and ends that I don't know what to do with; the bathroom ~ well as I was typing this I was thinking the bathroom is the only place that isn't full of school, but I'm wrong. There are several catalogs and even a few books that I'm working on going through.

When I am out and about everything I see the thought "how can I use that for school?" pops into my head. School has totally taken over our lives, it's just a way of life for us. Even when hubby and I have date nights once in a while, our talk usually hits on school at least 2 or 3 times.

 

We were in Maryland, and crossed Polaski Blvd. I got all excited, because we studied about Polaski (someone only hs'ers and Revolutionary War buffs know) and pointed it out, asking the kids, "Now, who exactly WAS Polaski?" And Rachael rolled her eyes and said, "I was hoping you wouldn't notice that!!!" LOL!!!

 

Wow Sommer! Our house is also really small. I think 900 sqft is pushing it!

We did talk about buying one of those large wooden storage sheds and dh would put a couple windows in it, insulate it, and all that and use that. Yet I would still not have enough room to store all of my stuff.

I think one of my problems that has gotten me to the point of overload is the "oh, if they were in ps they would have access to all of this". Ten sets of different paints and 500+ books later I have overwhelmed myself. Or maybe this is my first real burnout. We did stop schooling this year at the end of May and are not planning to start back until September. Maybe it is burnout and it will pass. We have been hard at it for the last few years with not too many breaks.

Thank you all for your comments and help.

 

whooo! at least i am not the only one thinking "where do i put this now" i keep asking my hubby for a bookshelf, but i think if he gets me one, he is afraid it will become overrun! he just keeps telling me to keep all the books in my plastic boxes. (that is why my room, you can't walk in.)