Juggling Work, Family, and Homeschool! Jennifer's Story

Guest Post by Jennifer Hill

Homeschooling can really be a challenge; a worthwhile one, for sure, but a challenge all the same. Throw in five children and a full time job, and you have a task designed for Super Mom! I certainly don’t claim to be anything even close to a Super Mom, but this is my life.

Our children range from preschool on up to 10th grade. While this makes it interesting, as far as having such a wide variety of topics and subjects to teach, it also makes it more difficult to keep up with actual school work.

Just consider for example, the different math topics we have to cover…our preschooler is learning how to match numbers with the right collection of objects; our 6 year old is practicing addition and learning subtraction; our 8 year old is learning multi-digit multiplication; our 11 year old is learning fractions and decimals and our 15 year old is learning advanced Algebra.

Can you imagine how much we would need to spend to purchase curriculum for such a diverse mix of topics? And that’s only one subject! Honestly, with the price of curriculum we would have to be rich to be able to afford it for all 5 of our children. Luckily, we don’t have to; there are so many free homeschooling resources available, you just have to look for them.

If that were our only obstacle to homeschooling, that would be the end of my tale…
But, it’s not. As I said before, I work full time as well. Granted, I do work from home, but that doesn’t make it any easier to teach 5 children school, do housework AND get work done. With that said, I wanted to share a day in the life of our large family.

Even though I work full time, I still have to get a full 8 hours in every day. The best part is that I’m able to do these hours whenever I want; this is the best part to being a work at home mom! Usually what I do is work 3 hours early in the morning, from 6-9.

From 9:00 to around 1:00 or 2:00, I work with the children on school work, correct papers or run any errands that I have that day. I resume working until about 5:00, then it’s time to start dinner. Sometimes (depending on what I’m making) the kids help me cook, sometimes I let them play.

After dinner, I spend some time answering any questions about that day’s school work; it’s also time for the children to finish any assignments that they were unable to finish earlier that day. We spend time together until bedtime, talking, watching a movie, playing, or finishing chores that were neglected.
Once the kids go to bed, I finish up any work that I needed to finish for the day. If I’m lucky (which, quite honestly, I’m not usually…) I will have some free time to crochet, work on my scrapbooking, or edit some photos.

This schedule has been working great for me lately. I’ll be honest with you though, it took me about 2 years to come up with a schedule that works! I’m just glad I finally figured out how to get all of the stuff on my plate finished each day…it helps me feel like a more productive (and successful!) mom!
Read more about our family life on our large family blog. I look forward to seeing you there!


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