Wondering if homeschooling and working outside of the home is possible? Homeschool, Fun learning, The outsiders

Table of Content

• thoughts on “What Homeschooling & Working Outside The Home Looks Like: Interview with LM Preston”
• What Hours Do You Homeschool If You Are Working?
• Welcome, sudden COVID-19 homeschoolers
• Question 10: You also have a mentoring and coaching program. Can you tell us more about that?
• Plan Ahead
• Tips for preparing your home for the incoming extreme cold weather

Either of these options can meet the scheduling needs of working parents and provide in-person teachers for core classes and/or desired electives. Extended family may be able to provide childcare and oversee schoolwork that your child can do with minimal help and supervision. You might also consider hiring an older homeschooled teen or college student to provide childcare if there are only a few overlapping hours in the working parents’ schedules. You may even consider exchanging child care for rent if you have extra space available. Like Sierra, I stumbled onto your page and I am glad I did.

Jen offers several different resources to support and assist working homeschool moms. The Working Homeschool Mom club by Jen McKinnon, is free on Facebook and currently has 24,000 members. We need tools to make our life easier. Choose curriculum that supports your homeschooling and working goals. I think every homeschool mom needs a supportive community, but especially working moms. You need to have a community that will know what you’re going through.

thoughts on “What Homeschooling & Working Outside The Home Looks Like: Interview with LM Preston”

I’m all about living more simply, and productively. Some days it just feels too much, and always like to learn new tips or tricks. Thanks for compiling your thought here. Hi Joan, I just saw that I was getting a lot of traffic from this post. It has taken me a while to learn to be flexible, but I am slowly getting there.

Much depends on your children, their ages, your approach to homeschooling, and the support of your spouse. My husband and I are committed to homeschooling our children, and we say no to a lot of extras. Currently, our children still at home are 9, 7, 7, 3 and 18months. My 9 year old and my 7 year old twins are the only ones who are doing school.

What Hours Do You Homeschool If You Are Working?

One parent can work with the student on a few subjects while he or she is home, leaving the remaining subjects for the other parent. Maybe Dad is the math and science guy while Mom excels at history and English. Splitting up the schoolwork allows each parent to contribute and to work to his or her strengths.

Her system taught me to do one thing at a time, and to chip away for short, focused periods. I can’t take a full day to deep-clean my house. But I can take 15 minutes that I’d otherwise waste playing phone games and vacuum one floor of the house. I can take 15 minutes and sort out a drawer full of junk that’s gotten hard to close – and so can you.

Welcome, sudden COVID-19 homeschoolers

If you work outside the home and want to homeschool, consider afternoon lessons, evening lessons, or even on weekends. You can also look at a year round approach, spreading out your plans over twelve months instead of nine. If you have extended family or friends who are supportive of homeschooling, pick their brains for ideas.

You can homeschool your kids and still have a job. Instead of thinking you can’t do it, think of all the reasons you CAN. I would create a plan with your spouse and/or family to help ensure your kids get the best experience possible.

Right now those are done entirely from home, though during non-COVID times, I work three days a week in the office at my full-time job, an hour from home. My wife, Kaitlyn, has exactly the same situation (because we have the same jobs!), and Chris, my son’s dad and our housemate, is working entirely from home right now too. Homeschooling parents, REGARDLESS of job status, who feel like there’s never enough time in the day for themselves, their spouse, their friends or their house. When you want to homeschool, but you work outside of the home, think outside of the box. You don’t need to make your child sit there for 8 hours a day. Modify the homeschooling schedule that fits your needs.

Working homeschool families encourage thinking creatively about activities with educational value. If your kids are on sports teams or take a class such as gymnastics, karate, or archery, count that as their P.E. I’m moving to a new home, have sold and give away many things from our bigger home.

I love connecting with readers and seeing what they’ve been up to. I know it’s 3 years later but are you still working and one more question. We have to laugh about the socialization – in a big family like ours, it’s never an issue. We have a rule of one extracurricular activity at a time, to minimize cost, stress and travel time. My kids are extroverts, and there’s no shortage of fun things to do in our town. We share a Google calendar so that we can get a glance at what everyone has on tap.

A fellow homeschool mom may be willing to help with certain subjects, for example, or even let them work independently as she homeschools her own. My go to resource for making sense out of our homeschool planning is my Plan Your Year Kit. Pam’s simple, practical tips helped me to make the most of my variable schedule, highlighting the best days and times for school in our home, and guided me in making a routine.

Schoolhouse Teachers

I should be in bed but instead, I chat with a mom on Facebook about homeschooling and the exhausting day she’s had. We swap life with teen stories and then I close up. Happy we’ve been able to connect, after all knowing you are not alone is a big reason of why I do what I do. After supper, the dishes are done (again!) I clean up and make the coffee for tomorrow. Happily, tomorrow is a full school day and I don’t have to leave the house.

You wouldn’t believe how freeing that feels. You’ll need to sort through the household tasks and assign them to yourself or your husband. Knowing that my husband is pitching in with meals, child care and housekeeping makes my load a little lighter. Wow, I'm impressed that you have the energy for all of it! But it's really encouraging to see how other homeschoolers structure their day. We're desperately in need of a bit more structure here.

Set your Home School Goals

Homeschooling is so much more efficient than a classroom. You also have less outside distractions. Plus, you know your kids better than any teacher could.

I homeschool all five of my children, and was worried I’d have to send them to school because I thought they had to be in school 8-3! I’d considered doing homeschooling of the evenings, but thought they wouldn’t learn properly. After reading your article I’m going to try it!