when i decided to blog about our homeschooling experience, i wanted to be completely honest about the whole thing. well, i'm really struggling, in several aspects, with our schooling. when we made the decision to homeschool, i was enthused. but there were a few things that i was nervous about - mainly, where schooling and family dynamics collide.
our children are very imaginative, they love to create little worlds and to make art and we allow them a lot of freedom in that. however, with four of them working together, they can make a room look like a bomb went off in all of 5 minutes. a mess that takes literally close to an hour to clean up (give or take, depending on who's helping). our 10 year old & 6 year old girls have an obsession with tearing paper of any kind (including kleenex & toilet paper) into teeny tiny pieces. it may be food for the dollhouse, or blankets for the dolls, & it ends up all over the floor, the furniture, everywhere! and even though i've told them many times not to tear up paper, it's like they just can't help themselves. i really think they are obsessed with it.
this being the case, having them here in the house all day every day doesn't leave any time for cleaning up. i am behind in laundry (as in, if i'm realistic, i probably have 15 loads of laundry in the wings, at the very least), the kitchen is always in disarray, the kids rooms are a disaster, our room is a disaster, the play room is unrecognizable as such. i'm the type of person who feels most creative & motivated by an clean, organized environment. when my surroundings are a mess, it's hard for me to function. when my kids were in public school, i could use that time to keep things at least maintained. now, i don't know how or when to get things to where i can feel sane. we don't have any family here to take the kids for a few hours, or a day, so that i can do housework. it's too much to ask of friends (and anyway there are only 2 friends i would even dare ask, and they both work). i find that during the time when we need to be having school, i'm doing housework. and then the day is almost over, and we haven't done school. not good!
how do homeschooling families get the time for keeping up their homes? many homeschooling families are large families like my own, so i know i'm not the first and only person to struggle with this. i don't know how to be organized about lessons in such a chaotic environment.
today, i want to run away.
