I haven't written on my blog since July. I've had several people ask me why. I figure the best way to explain is to write about what we are doing these days in our family, since I actually have a few minutes to sit down and write on here.
Eric is working about 65 hours a week at J.C. Bamford here in Savannah. They make skid steer vehicles, and he inspects them as they come off the line for defects. He's exhausted pretty much all the time. And yet he makes the effort to hang out with the kids and me in the evenings, and is keeping a good sense of humor about life in general. We try to keep our evenings fairly free so we can spend time with him.
Caroline just finished her first semester at Armstrong Atlantic State University. She's living at home while attending college, and working her same job at Chick-fil-A. I'm proud to say that she got a 4.0 GPA her first semester in college while working 15+ hours a week. Good girl!
I'm home schooling Mary (9th grade) and Bobby (7th grade); more about that in a minute. I'm also teaching 15 piano/1 voice students. I'm also teaching three classes of Spanish (2 classes of Spanish 1 and 1 class of Spanish 2--how's that for confusing?) at our home school co-operative every Friday. I'm also one of the leaders of Mary's unit in the local American Heritage Girls Troop 2007, which meets on Tuesday nights. This all adds up to not a whole lot of free time. It's all great stuff, and I'm enjoying it all, but it just means that time to spend online is limited.
About the home schooling: a lot of people don't seem to realize that home schooling by itself, if being done diligently, is a full-time job. It involves selecting appropriate curriculum for each child, creating yearly goals, writing weekly lesson plans, and THEN spending time each day helping each child learn: math, language arts, history, science, etc. After they are done with each day's work it must be corrected and evaluated. These things don't just magically happen. A home schooling mom has to stay organized and persevere so that she and the kids do not fall behind. In addition, we have to plan extra-curricular activities so that our kids have some fun along with their hard academic work.
So why haven't I been blogging? Well, I have a full-time job home schooling two of my kids, and a part-time job (8 hours a week) teaching music, and another part-time job (approximately 5-6 hours a week) teaching at the co-op. With all of that and keeping the house clean, doing the laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, etc....well, blogging has not been a top priority. And before anybody comments: yes, my children do help with household chores, and yes, I know that they are not toddlers anymore and can do a lot of their school work independently, and yes, I know that many people have extremely busy lives that are much harder than mine. I'm not complaining about anything here; I really do love my life as it is right now.
And with that, I'm off to wrap presents!
Next post: what we are doing for home school this year.
Eric is working about 65 hours a week at J.C. Bamford here in Savannah. They make skid steer vehicles, and he inspects them as they come off the line for defects. He's exhausted pretty much all the time. And yet he makes the effort to hang out with the kids and me in the evenings, and is keeping a good sense of humor about life in general. We try to keep our evenings fairly free so we can spend time with him.
Caroline just finished her first semester at Armstrong Atlantic State University. She's living at home while attending college, and working her same job at Chick-fil-A. I'm proud to say that she got a 4.0 GPA her first semester in college while working 15+ hours a week. Good girl!
I'm home schooling Mary (9th grade) and Bobby (7th grade); more about that in a minute. I'm also teaching 15 piano/1 voice students. I'm also teaching three classes of Spanish (2 classes of Spanish 1 and 1 class of Spanish 2--how's that for confusing?) at our home school co-operative every Friday. I'm also one of the leaders of Mary's unit in the local American Heritage Girls Troop 2007, which meets on Tuesday nights. This all adds up to not a whole lot of free time. It's all great stuff, and I'm enjoying it all, but it just means that time to spend online is limited.
About the home schooling: a lot of people don't seem to realize that home schooling by itself, if being done diligently, is a full-time job. It involves selecting appropriate curriculum for each child, creating yearly goals, writing weekly lesson plans, and THEN spending time each day helping each child learn: math, language arts, history, science, etc. After they are done with each day's work it must be corrected and evaluated. These things don't just magically happen. A home schooling mom has to stay organized and persevere so that she and the kids do not fall behind. In addition, we have to plan extra-curricular activities so that our kids have some fun along with their hard academic work.
So why haven't I been blogging? Well, I have a full-time job home schooling two of my kids, and a part-time job (8 hours a week) teaching music, and another part-time job (approximately 5-6 hours a week) teaching at the co-op. With all of that and keeping the house clean, doing the laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, etc....well, blogging has not been a top priority. And before anybody comments: yes, my children do help with household chores, and yes, I know that they are not toddlers anymore and can do a lot of their school work independently, and yes, I know that many people have extremely busy lives that are much harder than mine. I'm not complaining about anything here; I really do love my life as it is right now.
And with that, I'm off to wrap presents!
Next post: what we are doing for home school this year.
1 comment:
Great post, Alice! I love your paragraph about homeschooling -- so true! I think I'm going to paste that paragraph into a Word doc and save it in my homeschool file! I think there is a tendency for people to think that since you are at home and/or a homemaker you can do all these extra projects (honestly I sometimes even think this myself . . . why can't I get more accomplished each day?) Oh yeah -- I'm teaching my kids! So thanks for the post!
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