Cinnamonhuskies:

eyond that, and you risk getting social services involved by a nosy neighbor or relative

Some states don't have regulations who must homeschool or what time frame children must be homeschooled in. While others would make it difficult or impossible to work day hours and homeschool at night in.

 

Is it possible? Anything is possible. The correct question you should be asking is, is it wise? I'm going to play devil's advocate here (since you already have many successful supermom homeschooler viewpoints) and point out a few confounding factors. There are 168 hours in a week. You presumably sleep 8 hours a night (56 hours), so after sleeping you have 112 hours in your week.

168 - 56 = 112 hours.

Let's assume you work a typical 40 hour workweek with a typical 1/2 hour commute on each end of 5 days (.5 hr x 2x/day x 5 workdays).

112 - 45 = 67 hours.

While you're working, your kids need to be someplace safe, either daycare, or bartering with a relative or neighbor (for which you'll owe either money or a fair energy exchange of something you have to offer in return). Most parents, if they were rolling in dough from a well-paying job, would either move to a better school district or enroll their children in private school, not homeschool, so I'm going to make a presumption here that you'll be working for a more modest salary and will either be paying a daycare bill while your kids are in school (average cost in before-tax dollars $15,000/yr/child) or bartering your services/trading favors. Therefore, for every hour you are at work and commuting to/from work (45 hours) you are going to own an additional amount of your life's energy EQUAL to those 45 hours to somebody else.

67 - 45 child care exchange = 22 hours.

When you get home from work every night, your kids are going to be hungry and you'll need to cook supper, sit down, eat with your kids, then clean up the dishes afterwards. Let's presume you're going to feed your kids a 40 minute box of hamburger helper every night and rush through the meal. Even if you save cleanup until after they go to bed, you still need to do that, so that's at minimum 1 hour per day x 7 days. You'll also need to feed them breakfast before you go to work, pack their lunches for wherever they are to go (or set food aside for the babysitter), get them dressed, and other morning tasks which will take, at minimum, another hour per day. Two hours lost per day, plus two extra hours on the weekend because I assume you, not the babysitter, will be feeding them lunch.

22 hours - 16 hours = 6 hours.

Now, every night your kids will need help with their bedtime routine to get on their PJ's, brush their teeth, take a bath, get tucked into bed, pick up their toys, read a bedtime story, etc. In our house, this routine takes an hour or more x 7 days per week.

6 - 7 bedtime routine = -1 hour

Now, if you're like most people, you need to eat, so at least one day per week you're going to have to make a trek to the grocery store and buy food. Since you'll be working, this will most likely be during a very busy time of the day, so it will take at least 2 hours (more likely 3).

-1 - 2 = -3 hours

To meet your minimum state education requirements for a homeschool education plan, they're going to demand you can demonstrate you're willing to put in AT LEAST as many hours as schools are required to dedicate to educating your child (6 hours per day). Many homeschool moms are flexible about -when- they squeeze in the education opportunities for their kids to be at various times of the day, but the fact remains that to teach your child, you need to be able to dedicate a certain number of hours to "feeding the sponge" and kids learn best when things are on somewhat of a consistent schedule (though that scheduled doesn't need to be from 9-3 every day)

-3 - 30 ed time = -33 hours

As you can see, the math simply doesn't add up. You're already 33 hours per week in the hole and you don't have a single second available to do laundry, clean the house, make love to your husband, or go to church. If you pay a daycare bill instead of swapping favors, once you pay taxes (including taxes on any portion of the income used to pay the childcare bill over and above the $5200 limit) and gas to commute to work you're probably going to be in the hole or just be breaking even. That's why so many homeschooler supermoms are also dedicated stay-at-home moms who peruse this website to glean ways to make ends meet on one income. You -COULD- eliminate that 45-hour daycare-energy drain by swapping off shifts with your husband so that one of you is home with the kids during the day while the other works, but I guarantee within 2 years one of you will be speaking to a divorce attorney because split-shift marriages become failed marriages within a very short period of time.

Perhaps some of the super homeschool moms could either suggest ways Pumpkin can afford to stay home with Lil'Pumpkin to homeschool, or enrich Lil'Pumpkins inadequate public school curriculum with supplemental homeschooling once she returns to work?

cheap_yankee:

Perhaps some of the super homeschool moms could either suggest ways Pumpkin can afford to stay home with Lil'Pumpkin to homeschool, or enrich Lil'Pumpkins inadequate public school curriculum once she returns to work?

Your numbers are interesting, but you're working from a negative viewpoint and making assumptions based on your own experience. 

She may or may not be working 40 hours a week... it may or may not take an extra 5 hours a week to get to work and back. It may or may not take 40 minutes to cook dinner (crockpots are wonderful)... my kids bedtime ritual took about half of what yours does... it probably would not take two hours of grocery shopping every week and it wouldn't necessarily have to be done during the busy part of the week.

Most importantly, not all states require 6 hours of school each day - I don't know if any state requires that. They do require a certain number of days of homeschooling (some do, anyway), but homeshcoolers learn much more in less time because there is no "busy work," or waiting on teacher to finish with something else, or walking to the cafeteria, or passing time while waiting for the slowest child to finish up, etc., etc.

Weekends, with the child, who is learning math and nutrition, are perfect for grocery shopping. A weekend trip to the museum is an excellent day's worth of history. Anyone can mash potatoes and talk ( meaning teach or answer questions)  at the same time.Laundry takes how many minutes to throw a load in the washer? 

Can one homeschool and work, too? She asked to see if it was possible, and yes, it's possible. It's been done before. I don't think that anyone can answer whether it's wise or not for someone else unless the other person's circumstances are completely known... and then maybe even not.  

 

 

I know of no states  that require you to have 6 hours of education a day. Some states have a 900 hours of home education a year  or 180 days , but that includes everything you do in your life. That equals  a 1/2 hour a day of home education. Some states have no requirements  at all, you don't even have to notify the schools.Education can mean brushing your teeth(health ), grocery shopping(home economics or life skills), going to the zoo(science or nature study. Almost everything you do every day can be counted as education, so really you can have your hours completed in no time. Only a few states do you even have to document your hours , less than 3 that I know of .As far as schedules we never followed one.In fact , I basically did what is known as unschooling.  My son never had a test  or did  worksheets. His first test was  his  hunter education course for the state and he passed it with 89 % at age 13 .Lisa

Pumkin find out the law of homeschooling in your state I see why not do it it will benifit the child in the long run and have a social of people with your child ages come and have a play day once in awhile so go for it.

cheap_yankee:

I'm going to play devil's advocate here (since you already have many successful supermom homeschooler viewpoints

I understand that you feel the difficulties and challenges need to be pointed out. I don't think anyone here suggested it was easy and there would be no hurdles or even actual obstacles. I know I said it drained me to work and homeschool and I had the ability to have the children with me as I managed my husband's business.

That still makes it possible to homeschool depending on the variables. Only the person who wants to attempt this knows for certain how much energy and time they really have and how much they are willing to do or give up personally to make this happen. I didn't get the impression that Pumpkin believed this would be an easy path. Homeschooling rarely is easy. Parenting is never simple and without major challenges. We understand this when we become parents and I hope we understand this when we consider homeschooling those children.

cheap_yankee:

To meet your minimum state education requirements for a homeschool education plan, they're going to demand you can demonstrate you're willing to put in AT LEAST as many hours as schools are required to dedicate to educating your child (6 hours per day).

Many states require a minimum number of days rather than hours per day. The summary of Texas law states 180 days with no requirements for hours. Pumpkin should check with her local homeschool office or department of education to be sure this is correct. This state has requirements for certain subjects to be taught.

I don't think I would recommend squeezing in studies here and there but it's possible to have a routine on a smaller bite of time. Many public and private Kindergarten programs run only half the day or insert several play times and naps into the day because young children aren't able to maintain a more demanding schedule. This makes it much easier to teach a younger child at home on less time but may well become more diccifult as the child gets older.

One of the best things about home education is the available selection of materials. There are several options that don't require a parent to actually instruct. These options include video schooling where the child watches a DVD of  a taped classroom in progress while doing the work along with it, using workbooks that contain much of the instruction in written form for the child to read him/herself and CD or online programs where it's much the same as the workbooks except done through the computer and sometimes under the supervision of instructors hired by the publisher.

This has gotten so popular than some states offer the computer and online curriculum as an alternative to sending a child to the school to be taught.

The above options likely don't work for the young child who is not yet reading well but does work for the older child whose educational needs are more demanding. This does help to make working and homeschooling possible.

cheap_yankee:

or enrich Lil'Pumpkins inadequate public school curriculum with supplemental homeschooling once she returns to work?

It has been commonly accepted that the average time for homeschooling is about four hours a day. It is my experience both through personal knowledge of people after-schooling and reading materials on it that an after-schooling parent will spend two to four hours a day to reteach materials or assist their child in weak areas. Why spend as much time on this as homeschooling completely would take?

Don't let the average hours frighten you. The average public school child is not spending six hours on actual education. Let's say the average school child is away for school eight hours a day. Many of them will spend one hour of that eight waiting for or on the school bus. So now we have seven school hours. For elementary school children, there is often a fifteen minute morning break and a fifiteen minute afternoon break. So rounding off, we are at 7 and a half hours. Then there is the 45 minute lunch break to bring us to less than 7 hours. Now let's add the 10 minutes between each class. That equals to at least an hour. So we are now at less than 6 educational hours. We then need to remember that a class spends at least 10 minutes settling in and doing non academic things. So really we are down to five hours now. How much time does a child spend waiting for his/her classmates to complete work so the teacher can move on with instruction? I think we are now at about four hours of actual instruction and educational work.

A homeschooling parent cuts out all the time spent sitting and waiting typically and counts just the educational hours. A parent with a tight time frame does need to consider how much prep time and break time will be added into the typical school day however.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

good points Brandy. 

my dd school starts at 8 55 and since it is just a few blks away the travel time is nothing.  the first 5 min or so if the teacher opens the door on time..(..not like dd grade 1 teacher) is announcements and then they play the music of the day. the teacher is signing off and exchanging room reading books while the kids write in their journal or draw in their book.  school goes to 245.

they have 15min recess and a 40 min lunch. so taking out the settling in time etc with coats etc  their actual school time is about 4.5 hrs.  they have daily exercise now too so take that out and you are down to 4hrs. 

Pat:

my kids bedtime ritual took about half of what yours does

I think an important point to bring up here is that many homeschoolers operate as a family effort, this is even more common in families with more children. We are definitely a whole family homeschool.

I don't spend the time on a bedtime routine for the kids as what was suggested. My teenage son oversees his sister brushing her teeth and washing her face and hands before bed. I monitor her bathing but at five, she is doing most of it on her own so I am just running the water and checking to be sure she did a good job. My husband, my son and I take turns tucking her in and reading a bedtime story.

I don't handle every detail of our homeschool myself either. My husband and I have worked together on our methods and curriculum though he tends to leave more of the specific things to me. My husband teaches some of the hands on and technical things at higher levels. My son will help his sister with drills and reviews of basics and also help her with the cutting and gluing required for some things at the primary levels.

I am not a super homeschooler. We just operate as a family and I have learned how to multitask. I think this is true of most of the other homeschoolers out there.

 

MarthaMFI:

since it is just a few blks away the travel time is nothing

That makes a big difference. Children living outside city limits can spend fifteen minutes or more on the bus since it takes time to stop and pick up more kids along the way. What would be a short drive if we hopped in the car becomes longer on a bus making many stops. I wouldn't want to be on the bus myself, lol.

 

 

I don't know about the US but here in my town when I looked into the homelearners program.  I found out that taking martial arts, gymastics etc counts as gym. same as taking piano lessons is music.  They have a few classes and they have martial arts classes at the place upstairs of them which counts as gym.

most parents have their kids in after school programs anyways so if you homeschool, it works.   going to the aquarium or science world counts where for me it is just a day out.  so I think homeschooling as an option is very doable here.   my kids are happy with public school but if it doesn't work later I will always change.