Time management and the dark side of virtual academies

It's not even noon yet and I'm exhausted. Sure, I got my requisite 8 hours of sleep; I eat well--and even healthfully, ooh-rah... but it's my brain that's the problem!

Looking through my planner book over the last two weeks.... of 16 days I've scanned, 13 of them had a time commitment of some sort or another outside the home. Things that I can't skip--or skip very easily.

The end result is that school hours have been shortened around here. And now, today is February 28. Time to settle accounts. The standard must be met!! So we've been playing school catchup, to everyone's stress, irritation and grief.

This is my fault, though. Who manages the home schedule around here but myself? I have only myself to blame. This is the constant time-management battle.


Why am I staying at home, really? To homeschool my children. In order to FISCALLY be able to do this, I teach piano lessons. I take piano lessons to make myself a better teacher.

And it piles on from there....things that, though good, eat away at my primary reason for staying home in the first place. The Great Balancing Act...how to keep the plates spinning.

So, anyway.... we're supposed to be at 53% in all core subjects by 7:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. Core subjects=WASL test subjects; ergo, Math, Science, and Language Arts (lit, comp, grammar, etc.) And we've been busting our tails to get there.

It's nice in many ways to have these setpoints to shoot for--but right now I'm SO not enjoying homeschooling. I feel like I'm not really teaching, I'm pushing to meet an arbitrary standard.

Again, there have been distractions that I need to carefully evaluate and/or eliminate from our time. For example - weekends are for shopping, not weekdays. (Unless you send the husband!) And never never allow salespeople into your home for estimates on X, Y, or Z for this product or service. It takes up an hour and a half of precious time.

LOL - so you see I got roped into the last one. Some place called Celebrity Foods called us up out of the blue, wanting to make a presentation to us about their products, which have no hormones, preservatives, yadda yadda.. so, I, the fool, allowed them to come. It took an hour and a half, and at the end of it all, we can't afford their services anyway. Wasted time. My fault.

And blogging. You see that lately I've been sporadic at best. I am truly attempting to "redeem the time" in some small fashion - so blogging has fallen to the back burner. (I'm good right now because it's lunchtime.)

Anyway.... we will not meet the 53% in math. I will not push where the concepts have not been learned. Fortunately the next unit is on measurements and on time. Fast units! So theoretically we can get ahead - but not by tomorrow morning!! After those units, we're back to multiplying/dividing numbers past 5 - so, 6, 7, 8, 9.

But with Grammar....there's no excuse for me there. These kids ought to be at 70%, I being their mother. But... time management! I've spent so much time on the time-sucker (math) that I'm mentally exhausted by the time grammar rolls around.

Okay, I am sounding whiny, which I'm really not feeling- just overdrawn.

So, closing with a funny.

Last weekend we went to Happy Teriyaki for dinner. A. and I arranged ourselves on one side of the table, D. and S. on the other. As I read their sweatshirts from left to right as they sat across from me, I noted that, put together, they said "BUM GAP."

This sent me into convulsions of laughter, as it did the rest of the family. It is now the "in joke" of the household.

Until the next time I have time... ciao!