Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

[KDOCK5]

This is our first year with MP, we are finally starting to get in a groove (although only on Week 8). We are loving loving Latin (even my 6 yo Kindergartener & my 3 yo chime in when we conjugate or decline....which is so awesome to see). I'm loving Rod & Staff Math. My girls aren't loving the mythology component, but I keep encouraging them. I haven't posted in awhile, but you guys have been a ton of help in the past so I wanted to reach out again! Here's the thing, we went from doing a 4 day a week schedule to 5 days....I've tried to give it a go, & we're doing "ok", but I feel like we reach our "burn out" level much quicker than we did before with the previous curriculum We could go 8-10 weeks on the 4 day schedule without taking a week off, but we've had to take 2 roughly weeks off so far (at varying times). One week, we just the whole week off & caught up on a few things we were behind on. The other 5 days were just scattered in here & there because things came up.

I try hard not to be a "check the boxes" type momma, but I can't help it. When I see we're behind in certain subjects it can drive me nuts, I have to fight that. (We are a week behind on Famous Men of Rome right now!) I love the depth of MP but I am just questioning myself at being able to continue at this pace. We are accustomed to a 4 day a week schedule & I keep thinking about how nice it was & how much we miss it.

So, I know some of you said you do use a 4 day a week schedule. Did you have to cut out certain things? If so, what? I love the depth of MP, but we are already doing school about 4 hours a day for 3rd & 5th....I don't think we can do more than that. Do you school year around? Just not sure how to do this with MP.....

Any advice?

Thanks as always! (I'm posting as kiddos are running around the house so excuse any typos! We are blessed with early risers who go from the moment they wake up, so it's loud here if I don't reign them in in the morning! Plus, have you noticed kids react to a change in weather, it's cooler here this morning that it has been, like wild animals! It just makes them friskier ha!)

[Evangelina]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

We have been transitioning to 4 days a week just because I like having that extra week day for things that come up during the week. Some weeks we do 5 days, but if I know for sure that we have to leave the house for any amount of time I approach the weeks lesson plan differently. I look at the week as a whole instead of the days as a whole.

There is so much great advice here about what works and what doesn't for different family dynamics. Some has worked great for us and some does not. For instance, we are self employed, with our shop and office being part of the house. As you can imagine there is no real-we do this now and we do that then-when living like this. We can be interrupted almost anytime for all sorts of reasons. We might not even sit down to do book work before 1 pm on some days. I would love to be able to start school at a certain time and end at a certain time and not get to worked up about the little check boxes not being checked off on the right day, but in reality I have found the formality of the lesson plan has really helped me to stay faithful every single day. It has also helped my children to understand that somethings have to be done everyday, especially when self-employed (though that's sometimes a hard and painful lesson, for me also). My kids have really suffered in some areas because "I" would consistently let anything else come before book work and I would keep putting things off or pushing work to the next day. I like being done at the end of spring so we can focus on other types of leaning in the summer, but mostly because summer is our busiest business season and it really wouldn't work for us to be doing book work then.

So how does it work for us? Like I said before I look at the week as a whole. If I need to leave the house during the week I just start grouping lessons together. Sometimes that's really easy, sometimes not. For instance, I might do normal recitation, art review, and poetry review on the same day (instead of different days as on the lesson plan). It really doesn't take much more time to group the little things. Something that has been working well is to group the enrichment exercise. It makes it sort of a fun couple of hours as everyone likes to listen to all the stories, books and songs. Sometime I can get an older adult sibling to do it with the littles which is GREAT for me. And for the enrichment items I normally just cover the material and don't go into much depth about authors or composers, but my kids love the stories and the songs. If the math lesson doesn't cover a new topic I will just assign the work without teaching the lesson. We might do a whole weeks worth of copy work in 2-3 days instead of 5. That might mean they don't have it firmly memorized by the end of the week, but they will thru reviewing it in later weeks.

We will be moving exclusively to 4 days a week when the snow finally sticks as the boss bought everyone ski passes (work bonus) and we will be spending 1 day a week at the ski hill and then another afternoon at a pool located near us. So we will see how great my plan plays out then. I may have to eat crow.

Finally, some hard lessons that I have had to learn about myself as wife, teacher, mom...I really have to have my *stuff* together. Our life is so full. I've had to let go of things, both mentally and physically (mostly physically). Meal planning is great, a large calendar for the whole family to write on, socks folded not just dumped in a basket, things organized, etc. I think when I finally quit stressing and feeling guilty about the boxes not being checked off and really started to make them part of our life it got tremendously easier for me (that makes no sense, I know). My son even came to me a few days ago and asked if he was done with book work for the day. When I said no, he said, "Well let's get going". You'd have to know my son to know what a tremendously, huge deal this is. So I feel like faithfulness in the small things has brought teaching moments and life lessons are being learned.

I think I've strayed way off track here. Hopefully you can glean something helpful here.

[jen1134]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

For instance, we are self employed, with our shop and office being part of the house. As you can imagine there is no real-we do this now and we do that then-when living like this. We can be interrupted almost anytime for all sorts of reasons. We might not even sit down to do book work before 1 pm on some days. I would love to be able to start school at a certain time and end at a certain time and not get to worked up about the little check boxes not being checked off on the right day, but in reality I have found the formality of the lesson plan has really helped me to stay faithful every single day. It has also helped my children to understand that somethings have to be done everyday, especially when self-employed (though that's sometimes a hard and painful lesson, for me also). My kids have really suffered in some areas because "I" would consistently let anything else come before book work and I would keep putting things off or pushing work to the next day.

THIS!

We have a similar setup going here: 9 people, a dog and a business (with 3 sub-brands) in one house. I've had to learn these lessons too and MP has helped tremendously!!

[Evangelina]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

THIS!

We have a similar setup going here: 9 people, a dog and a business (with 3 sub-brands) in one house. I've had to learn these lessons too and MP has helped tremendously!!

jen1134,
I love knowing there are other people like us out there and are making it work. It makes my soul happy. We have 4 people plus 2 adult children that work for us (and their dogs), 2 cats, 1 very large German Shepherd, 3 pigs, 2 sheep and multiple chicken all the while running a business and building a house, which as you can imagine is not a fast process when you are doing it yourself and are self-employed. I think we are going on about 8 years. We are living in a 60' single wide, but have recently been able to buy the house next door to us. Moving soon and we will actually have a "school area". Very big deal. Right now it's a combo of kitchen/living room/office/school area.

Again, way off topic.

The lesson plan has helped me tremendously too!

[jen1134]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

jen1134,
I love knowing there are other people like us out there and are making it work. It makes my soul happy. We have 4 people plus 2 adult children that work for us (and their dogs), 2 cats, 1 very large German Shepherd, 3 pigs, 2 sheep and multiple chicken all the while running a business and building a house, which as you can imagine is not a fast process when you are doing it yourself and are self-employed. I think we are going on about 8 years. We are living in a 60' single wide, but have recently been able to buy the house next door to us. Moving soon and we will actually have a "school area". Very big deal. Right now it's a combo of kitchen/living room/office/school area.

Again, way off topic.

The lesson plan has helped me tremendously too!

I can definitely relate/imagine. It's been challenging enough just trying to get to all the repairs our house needs (100+ year old house with plaster walls...and very active children....), never mind trying to build one! The kids make fun of us all the time because the bathrooms are the only rooms in the house that haven't been repurposed in the 11 years we've been here. Even the closets have served as bedrooms and office space, lol.

Anyways, feel free to PM anytime you want to chat about the unique challenges of homeschooling while running a home business!

[KDOCK5]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

We also run our business out of our home & I work 2 days a week.....a babysitter comes in 2 days a week & watches the younger who are done with school in the mornings & the olders join when they are done. I try to devote afternoons on these days to work only.....so, I can relate to the challenges of owning your own business & schooling in the same space! Our set up works fairly well (we have a school room & office in our bonus room), but a lot of days I wish it was all on the main level so I could watch the youngers while I school the olders. Like many of you stated, sometimes I have to stop what I'm doing with the kids to deal with whatever has come up work related. Although these interruptions can be bothersome, I tell myself all these interruptions show my kids what owning your business really does entail. I usually get up and work a couple of hours in the morning before school starts (my kiddos know to find me upstairs in the office when they wake up), to try to work ahead in an effort to eliminate interruptions, but it does seem things always come up.

One of the reason MP appealed to me was bc of the order.....we need more order with doing what it takes to manage our business while schooling & keeping up with four kids. Numbering the days is a good idea, I have heard this one before. It may be a good option for us. I just don't like how quickly it seems we get burned out! This is new to me (& this is my 4th year home schooling). Maybe part of this is bc I have a 3rd & 5th grader now. My 5th grader has always been a quick worker, easy to teach (self motivated & does not frustrated very easily). The 3rd grader.....quite the opposite (gets frustrated very easily, constantly have to keep her on task, quick tempered & basically just wants to have fun ALL the time). I have both of them together in Latin, Grammar, Christian studies, science. I'm thinking I need to separate them at least in Latin, maybe grammar. Maybe I need to look really hard at some adjustments I could make with what we do together which could eliminate frustration (which may be leading to burnout), but it sure is nice to be able to teach 2 at once.

I would like to be able to do the school for 6 weeks (5 days a week) & take off a week schedule....but we just can't make it 6 weeks. I just can't get the 4 day a week option out of my head!

Thanks for listening to me guys & letting me know what works for y'all. It does help!

[Evangelina]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

We also run our business out of our home & I work 2 days a week.....a babysitter comes in 2 days a week & watches the younger who are done with school in the mornings & the olders join when they are done. I try to devote afternoons on these days to work only.....so, I can relate to the challenges of owning your own business & schooling in the same space! Our set up works fairly well (we have a school room & office in our bonus room), but a lot of days I wish it was all on the main level so I could watch the youngers while I school the olders. Like many of you stated, sometimes I have to stop what I'm doing with the kids to deal with whatever has come up work related. Although these interruptions can be bothersome, I tell myself all these interruptions show my kids what owning your business really does entail. I usually get up and work a couple of hours in the morning before school starts (my kiddos know to find me upstairs in the office when they wake up), to try to work ahead in an effort to eliminate interruptions, but it does seem things always come up.

One of the reason MP appealed to me was bc of the order.....we need more order with doing what it takes to manage our business while schooling & keeping up with four kids. Numbering the days is a good idea, I have heard this one before. It may be a good option for us. I just don't like how quickly it seems we get burned out! This is new to me (& this is my 4th year home schooling). Maybe part of this is bc I have a 3rd & 5th grader now. My 5th grader has always been a quick worker, easy to teach (self motivated & does not frustrated very easily). The 3rd grader.....quite the opposite (gets frustrated very easily, constantly have to keep her on task, quick tempered & basically just wants to have fun ALL the time). I have both of them together in Latin, Grammar, Christian studies, science. I'm thinking I need to separate them at least in Latin, maybe grammar. Maybe I need to look really hard at some adjustments I could make with what we do together which could eliminate frustration (which may be leading to burnout), but it sure is nice to be able to teach 2 at once.

I would like to be able to do the school for 6 weeks (5 days a week) & take off a week schedule....but we just can't make it 6 weeks. I just can't get the 4 day a week option out of my head!

Thanks for listening to me guys & letting me know what works for y'all. It does help!

Wow! 3 of us ended up in this thread that are self-employed and homeschooling?

Something that may help in regards to burn-out is finding a way to spend doing something physical. That is the idea of the ski hill and pool for us. I know that is hard for some people to do and can feel like your just adding another thing on top of everything else. We, at times, use things like this for rewards. Another thing we stated trying to remember to do with our son is to reward him when we see a real accomplishment in his school work. Especially when he did it himself and not because we pestered him. Part of why we were experiencing burnout in the past was because I felt like I was doing more pestering than actual teaching. I was getting frustrated almost on a daily basis and basically giving up.

I can related to this...The 3rd grader.....quite the opposite (gets frustrated very easily, constantly have to keep her on task, quick tempered & basically just wants to have fun ALL the time).

Alright, I have 1 kid with a marble in her mouth, one yelling mom, mom, mom and my husband just said he's cutting the power.

[Evangelina]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

I've thought about this a little more and wanted to add a few more things.

If the course you are doing offers a DVD spend the money and get it. Preparing to teach a lesson can be time consuming and mentally exhausting, especially with the day so full already. Memoria Press does a great job at thoroughly teaching thru DVD and I think are worth the investment. I have read some find them boring, they have worked for us (sometimes you just make do, another life lesson). And I know the subject is thoroughly taught.

Not so much advice of how to, but I wanted to add, I have to remind myself almost daily about what our vision is as a family and why we are doing what we do. My end goal is not to check off all the boxes or have money in the bank (though those are important). We had to really take a hard look at our situation this summer and change some things. I am talking specifically about being self-employed, and also our results of schooling our children. Our relationships were in extreme danger because we lost our way and made the check boxes and the work more important than our relationships. The reality is, if you let yourself, you can work and school everyday, all day and that leads to burnout. It has helped us to re-evaluate what we want for our family and make small changes to reach that goal, and a large part of this is our schooling schedule (being faithful to that lesson plan has been a huge help).

[alihuyoung]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

Hi! We do a 4 day week, and school year round with lots of week long breaks for travel or trainings. My girls are just finishing K and 1st, so it's probably easier to fit everything into 4 days than it will be for you with your ages, but I'm sure it can be done
Our big motivator is Fun School Friday, which can only happen once all the regular school work for the week is done. There have only been a few days where a child has decided to leave work to be finished on Friday I love Fun School Friday just as much as the children do, because it gives us built in time to do Messy Art, Music, Handicrafts, Baking etc. All those things that tend to get pushed to the side in busy daily life. We work overseas and my husband and I are both in language school, so we work with a non-traditional schedule as well. Adding some intentional "fun" into our school week has been hugely motivating for my resistant scholar

[Evangelina]

Re: Talk to me ladies who do 4 days a week! Or anyone else that has advice....

The kids make fun of us all the time because the bathrooms are the only rooms in the house that haven't been repurposed in the 11 years we've been here.

OK, I had to laugh at this because we have a bathroom that was made a bedroom that is now a closet!

OK, I'm done.