Kathleen Desmarais

We start school tomorrow in my house. This is my favorite time of the school year! the beginning. I get all excited gathering materials (especially art materials–I love new paints, markers, pencils, crisp white paper). The anticipation of the school year really gets me gitty. I have all the school books neatly stacked with the spines still stiff and new schedules posted on the fridge. I think about all we are going to learn, all the neat field trips we will take, my darlings sitting around the table filling their minds with great things. (Hey, a Mom can dream.) Ahhh! I take a moment to enjoy it…….

Because I know in about 4 days it will be all out the window–pencils broken, marker set down to three, can’t find the scissors, can’t find my math book, I really hate this writing course, this schedule is not working for me, do I really have to read this? And we will settle down into something more realistic. But it’s all good. It rarely goes the way I plan it but my kids always end up learning and have a great time.

This year we will be taking a trip up the east coast to visit Williamsburg, Washington DC, Gettysburg, Philadelphia, Lancaster CO., and NYC. I have been planning this trip for two years to coincide with our study of early American history. I remember taking this trip myself when I was a kid and really enjoying it. What a great opportunity we homeschoolers have to experience history this way. It’s not just about text books, but really seeing where it all happened. I am especially looking forward to the reenactments at Williamsburg.

We just finished our last science co-op class today! That has been great fun. Our group dwindled a bit from about 12 families down to 6 core families. The smaller group has been much better. (I highly recommend it.) Today we ended with making the Plant Parts Salad and had a pizza and pool party to celebrate.

With Pandia Press, I am still hard at work formatting Chemistry (1) and writing Modern Times (2). With MT2 I have recently spent weeks trying to write a series of lessons about socialism, communism, fascism, and Animal Farm. OMG – try doing an internet search for socialism or communism. It’s really difficult to find straightforward, unbiased, history information. You end up getting sites like Marxist teens, communists unite, score with the socialists.(OK, I made all of those up, but it was something like that.) Wow! I didn’t realize how many groups out there actually think Karl Marx and Lenin had a good idea that could work here in America. I guess they have never heard of Stalin or China. So now you know how I feel about it, I’m a Capitalist girl. But I try very hard not to let that show in the course. I actually think communism is a good idea on very small scale. I mean, I would love to live with a group of families, sharing resources, community garden, watching my kids for me, sharing chores, everybody equal, sharing property rights, nobody getting ahead . . . wait, how would that work? Maybe it’s not a good idea AT ALL.

I’ll let you all know how our first few weeks of school, our trip, and the communists turn out.

Kathleen

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Lately, it has been getting harder and harder to juggle my time between family and business. Some days I am so scattered I don’t think I accomplish a thing. My time is so stretched between kids, business, and housekeeping that it seems like none of it gets done. And now our house is on the market so it has to be kept clean ALL THE TIME! Ugh! I think my kids are out to get me sometimes (paranoia is setting in). Every time I try to get on the computer the baby crawls onto my lab. She has even learned sabotage! She reaches up under my desk and hits the keys on my keyboard. (So if you ever see “#i&m?987nu” in one of my posts, you know how it happened.) The older kids sneak out of the house when they know my attention is on the computer and I find myself yelling a lot lately. “If I have to say ‘no’ to you more than once, it wastes my time. I only have time to say ‘no’ once!” I actually said that to my son the other day. I am not even sure what I meant by that.

It’s just that it’s hard for me to focus on more than one thing at a time. I can’t think and talk (or yell as the case may be) at the same time. When I sit down at the computer, I need to be able to stay there for at least an hour. Shoot, it takes me 15 minutes just to open programs and figure out where I left off. But it seems like these days my computer time comes in short spurts–5 mins. here, 15 mins. there. The start-stop of my day is the most frustrating part.

But when I take a deep breath and focus on priorities, I realize that the kids are my most important job. I really need to be there, at the table, when they doing there school work. I need to sit down with my baby on the floor and PLAY with her. It’s not enough to just be in the house with my kids and keep them safe. So lately I have been staying up to the wee hours of the morning to get work done and spending my days focused on the kids. At least that has been my goal each day. But the long hours wear on you and you walk around like a zombie from the sleep deprivation and do things like put dinner in the oven but forget to turn it on.

This is the challenge of home schooling when you have a home business. There is no time when you get to solely focus on one thing for any decent amount of time. You have to be willing and able to multi-task and deal with multiple interruptions. I am going to be examining this problem of juggling HS and HB more in depth. Many of the old strategies that use to work for me no longer seem to be helping. As working / home schooling moms we must be able to adapt to every new situation. For me it has been the addition of another child who has a particularity strong curiosity and little awareness of danger (and climbs like a monkey) and changes in our home situation (building a new house and selling the current one). Any seemingly small change can create havic and send you back to drawing board trying to figure it all out again.

I will be posting my journey through this temporary chaotic situation (and I am sure it is temporary), sharing any new strategies I employ. I welcome others to post how they handle (or struggle to handle) juggling HS and HB. Maybe we can learn from each other.

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The following is my day on Monday, December 17th, 2007. I kept a pad with me all day, recording everything. People often ask me how I do it–home school, home business, 4 kids. Well this is how. This particular day happened to be more home school than home business but it was still a pretty typical day. (Unlike many businesses, the holidays are a slow time for education publishers. I plan to post another typical day during my busy time, like in April or August.) I tried to report everything here–the good, the bad, and the ugly. I hope it will help people see that although we are far from perfect, it isn’t so difficult to combine family with business (and home school too).

7:30 AM – I’m the first one up, Grace (1) is up two minutes later. I try to sneak Christmas presents in from the car but Sarah (13) wakes up and I have to ask her to shut her eyes. Charlie (6), who fell asleep on the couch last night, wakes up next. I start picking up from the night before (we went to bed without picking up- I hate that). Baby follows me around, undoing what I do. I remind Sarah that she did not sweep the kitchen floor last night and now she has extra to do this AM (last night was not a good one). Charlie asks his usual morning question “Can I turn on the T.V. ?” “No.” (He asks this every morning even though he is never allowed to watch TV in the AM.) I warm up my computer and start coffee. (I think I may be needing lots, so I make a whole pot.)

8 AM – I write a list of weekly goals as I do every Monday. My list for this week:

Personal/Home -

• Finish wrapping Christmas presents
• Pay bills
• Visit flooring store
• Plan Christmas dinner and guest list

Business -

• Complete Dreamweaver tutorial
• Get bids on printing Ancients (2)
• Complete set-up of blogs
• Touch base with writers
• Send Christmas cards to associates

I change the baby. The kids are all awake now. I start my morning pronouncement, “Do your morning routines!” Morning routines consists of various grooming tasks and household chores for the kids–get dressed, teeth, hair, feed animals, take out the trash, unload dishwasher, etc. I start fixing breakfast while finally drinking my coffee. The TV is on and I start to yell. I hate it when I yell and I vow that will be my only yelling for the day. Gracie scatters clean clothes around the house from the laundry basket. As I clean it up, Pete calls asking my opinion about problems with our new renter in our commercial building. I feed Gracie Cheerios and bananas as I sing to her the Cheerios song my sister-in-law made up (it’s now Grace’s favorite). Reprinted here with permission:

Cheerios and nanas, Cheerios and nanas,Cheerios and nanas, that’s how I start my day. Then I play and play and play and play. That’s all I have to say.”

Charlie starts asking his other usual question, “Can I build a fort?” “No, not now. Maybe after your school work is done.” Charlie starts arguing about breakfast, as usual. Charlie doesn’t want to eat anything. Charlie ends up drinking a glass of Green Goodness (a health drink made from pureed fruit and blue/green algae). I’m happy with that. Chris (12) finishes off leftovers from 2 nights ago while Sarah, Grace, and I eat eggs, toast, and uncured bacon.

Yikes it’s 8:45, 15 mins. till our scheduled school time.  I remind Charlie to feed the cat and Sarah starts sweeping the floor. I clean up from breakfast and change and dress the baby.

9 AM – While the kids wrap up their chores, I answer emails. Charlie starts on his math (he is learning subtraction). I stop emailing to help him. Chris starts on history. He borrows my computer to look up Henry VIII info. Sarah starts math, pre-algebra. I leave for a quick bathroom break. When I return Chris and Charlie are arguing.(Apparently Charlie got too close to Chris and breathed on him.) Disaster diverted (and the boys separated) we get back to school work. (I find that I have to stay close to the kids during school work or they will disappear, or start arguing.) Sarah finishes math and helps Charlie finish his math while I get up to finish cleaning the kitchen. Gracie dumps Charlie’s flashcards across the kitchen floor. I just leave them there for now. Both Chris and Sarah are working on Henry VIII Family Reunion worksheets now. Chris writes one sentence for each person; Sarah writes so much that she needs extra paper (typical). I tell Chris he needs to write at least 3 sentences for each Tudor family member. Charlie turns on Cirque du Soleil music in the living room and starts dancing around with Gracie.

10 AM – I pick up the flashcards and change the baby. Charlie, Chris, and I practice karate katas for our class tomorrow with baby underfoot. Charlie and I pretend to spar.

10:15 – I wash up and dress for the day. Charlie is finally hungry and eats cereal mixed with plain yogurt and fresh fruit.

10:30 Baby is playing nicely with her toy baskets so Charlie and I sit down for his reading lesson. He goes through his sight word flashcards and we play “Say It, Slap It.” (This is a game I made up for my very kinesthetic son. I lay out the flash cards and say a word and he slaps the card that matches, often quite hard, he loves it.) He copies a sentence and reads a short book and we call him “done with school for the day.”

(By the way, the whole time I am doing school work with the kids, my work phone is ringing. But I do not answer it. If I did I would lose all control of the school day. I let the machine do the work)

I pull some dog food out of Gracie’s mouth (she just loves the stuff).

11 AM – Chris and Sarah read their Tudor Family Reunion sheets to me. They are hilarious! I will try to post them. Chris starts his math (fractions). Charlie gets to start working on his fort in the living room. I answer a few more emails with Gracie on my lap. (Typing is very slow one-handed.)

11:30 – Everyone looks settle for a few minutes so I pull out Modern Times (2) and try to write a lesson (Grace is “helping” Charlie with his fort). I am quickly interrupted by Pete who asks me to make a decision about the roof for the new house. What color tin do I want? Apparently there are a zillion choices. We try to get online to see the choices but the web site is so confusing we can’t find the color chart we need. Pete calls the company instead. I help Chris with his language arts program. I read the lesson regarding pronouns and antecedents to him. He seems to get the point, so I don’t make him do all the practice exercises. I do make him underline pronouns in a poem. I choose the plain tin for the roof, no color after all.

12 PM – We start lunch. Easy one today–leftover rigatoni.

12:30 – The kids are playing in Charlie’s fort so I sit down to finish the MT2 lesson (about the Plain Wars) and send emails to a few printers to get bids on Ancients 2.

1 PM – The weather has warmed-up, so even though we still have science to do, we all go outside. The three older kids play a make-believe game involving poison dart frogs and dinosaurs while Grace and I take a walk. We check out the garden to see if the frost zapped it. The mustard greens look good and we still have a few squash flowers blooming. We pick a few old corn cobs and go to visit and feed the cows and lambs in the pasture. Gracie pets the boarded horse.

2 PM – I nurse Gracie to sleep.

2:15 – With the baby asleep and kids still helping Pete, I have a quiet house! I spend five minutes straightening my desk (I can’t focus in clutter). I enjoy my 2nd cup of coffee and write another lesson for MT2. This one is a writing assignment for Tom Sawyer.

3 PM – Charlie comes in and I let him watch a PBS show while he eats cheese and crackers. The rest come in for snacks. I start mixing the pizza dough for dinner (Mondays are pizza and a movie night at our house). I return a phone call from this morning ( a charter school that wants to see sample materials). I finish the T.S. assignment. (I actually wrote two writing assignments for T.S., one on characterization and one a symbolism. Which one will I use? Maybe both.)

3:40 I call my Mom to ask her to check her local stores for a present that I can’t find here. I start where I left off with a CD tutorial of Dreamweaver (I am tired of depending on others to do web site work). The baby wakes up so I don’t get far. The neighbors call (home from school) to see if the kids can play. I say yes, outside. I get Gracie a snack of cheddar cheese and apple pieces. While she eats I drink a very large glass of water and Grace watches me do yoga (she thinks this is very funny).

4 PM – While the kids are still outside, I wrap presents (lots of fun with a 1 y.o.). I spend the first 10 mins. looking for the scotch tape. I end up using packing tape. I finish the presents (yeah! something is complete!) and baby needs changing.

4:30 – I get out Gracie’s stacking cups and the dolly that looks like Albert Einstein meets Don King (her favorite toys) and while she plays I fold laundry. First I have to dismantle Charlie’s fort a little to clear the couch. He has it all held together with massive amounts of scotch tape (that’s where the tape went). (By the way, I won’t clean up the fort for him, he will do that.)

I form the pizza dough and set it to rise then cut up the veggies. I call a couple of the kids to the house to point out their failure to complete a couple of their morning chores. A less than immediate response and I yell for the 2nd time today, drats!

5ish – Older kids have started a huge bonfire with the yard trash. Very nice on a cold day, so I go to join them for a few minutes.

5:30 – I call all of the kids in for picking-up time. I set the timer for 10 mins. and they run around like busy ants cleaning everything in sight (including Charlie’s fort).

5:45 – The boys put the toppings on the pizzas. They make them look like works of art! Pizzas go in the oven and I start yet another load of laundry. Kids set the table, feed animals, and other chores before dinner. (You may be getting the idea that I have a lot of laundry to do today. I usually only do one load a day, but I do not do laundry on the weekends. That is why Mondays are dubbed “Laundry Day.”)

6:15 – Dinner – Mom’s homemade wholewheat pizza is delicious and nutritious!

6:45 – Kids clean the kitchen while I finish straightening up the house (only because my in laws are coming in the AM).

7 PM – Movie time. We watch Bourne Identity

8:45 – Kids get ready for bed. I help Charlie with teeth and washing-up.

9 PM – Charlie goes to bed. Give Grace a bath, even though it may be a couple of hours before she goes down.

10 PM – Grace and Chris go to bed. Sarah watches the Food Network for 30 mins before going to bed while I start blogging (including this post). I will likely get to shower and bed by midnight and read for an hour before calling it a night.

This ended up being a pretty productive day, even though we never did get to science. As I read over the day, it seems a little hectic and busy. It did not feel that way. I am happy that the kids learned many new things, used their imaginations, played outside for a long time, (and nobody got hurt). I am happy I was able to write two lessons, get a few tasks started from my goal list, and only drank 2 cups of coffee. I would say the hardest part about my days are the constant interruptions and restarts. But all in all, I find days like this rewarding. Although mundane, I love being surrounded by my family all day and I wouldn’t change that, not even if it meant more productivity with my business.

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