To Working Parents of Home Schooled Children?

You have to be dedicated, that’s for sure. My wife is working again after 18 yrs of homeschooling (she was the primary teacher for all those years). My son is 15 now and it takes time to make it all work. You have to schedule things out, rely on your child to be self motivated at times, and sometimes you have to push on them to get stuff done. I guess, from talking to my friends at work that don’t homeschoo, it’s not so much different from a public school student…except that at the end of the day, you have to grade the work, and take responsibility for the outcome (in my state at least).

The scheduling of work is the important issue. My son has assignments he has to do. When we are home, we give him the time he needs to help him understand what is required, and help him learn. The goal, though, is to have him become adept at learning. I can show him something, but it sticks when he figures it out on his own.

Granted, my kids are more interested in arts than in the sciences. But, you can even give them a good basic understanding of sciences, even at a highschool level. In aonother question on the site here, one parent said you can do a lot with good books and a great chemistry set. I agree. We have found that we don’t have to supervise every minute of the learning experience. We facilitate the learning process. That’s the important part.

Haven’t ever used K-12. We’ve had some success just designing our own curriculum…it’s more difficult maybe, but we managed it just fine.

Good luck to you!

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I’ve used K12 for over four years and love it. In fact, we have a middle school course now – Physical Science.

K12’s Middle School courses are pretty much student led. However, you’ll still need time to grade assessments, enter data, and go over work. K12’s courses are very demanding. For instance, the “8th grade” Literary Analysis and Composition has been used as 9th grade Honors English for kids leaving K12 and going to a public high school.

Your child/ren will need to be very self-sufficient and self-motivated for it to work well, but it can be done. If you have opposite working schedules, even better! The neat thing about K12, is that, if you’re able (employer ‘net rules), you can log in from work and look up a lesson and help your child remotely – because the majority of lessons are delivered online.

I’m a SAHM and always have been since I’ve HS’ed. I hope other working families can give you input to that. If you want more K12 input, let me know.

I have no idea how a working homeschooling parent copes. I hope you can find out. My husband does not help with the school at all and I work long hours in a demanding job, my kids are about grade 6-7 level and I feel that my house is coming apart at the seams. I know some moms come home from work and mark the children’s daily assignments and everything is hunky-dory. We are continuously playing “catch-up” with our work. Every year I am hoping that they will be able to work independently, but it isn’t here yet. We use a variety of materials. We are behind in some subjects and are ahead in others. I still believe in homeschool. One child would not thrive in PS, the one who would does not want to go because they will put her back a year because of her age. I guess it would be great if the parents actually shared the responsibility.

I don’t know how a family with an 8th grader will do it. But I work part time and homeschool my 2nd grader. I am able to set my own schedule for the most part so it is much easier for our family. It even works out well for ‘homework’. Dad is in charge of getting the drilling of homework styled assignments (writing spelling words, practicing math fact families, etc)done while I am at work. It is a good way for him to be involved and takes some of the ‘busy work’ time issue off of my crazy schedule.

I don’t use K12 and don’t have any real interest in it.

We don’t use pre-packaged curricula, but basically I would take one evening per week and plan out the work for the rest of the week they’d be doing independantly– make a list for each day of pages or worksheets to be done that day, books to read, and have them spend some time on thier unit projects.

A couple of nights a week, or Saturday mornings, I would sit with them and go over some of their skills practice stuff, like math or language arts, help them with a new concept or anything they were having trouble with.

At dinner or in the evenings, we’d discuss things like what they read or how their unit studies are coming along.

I work two days a week, so my husband handles the homeschooling on those days. I also know friends who work full time (specifically as nurses) and are still able to do a magnificant job. Personally I don’t care for K-12, I’d rather customize curriculum to my family. If I wanted something like public school, I would send my kids there!

We work full time and can home school because my wife works from 12:30 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. I do the home schooling and then I go to work from 11:00 P.M. to 7:30 A.M. Wife begins home schooling at 8:00 A.M. and I take over at 11:00 A.M. until 1:30 P.M. Yes, we do get enough sleep.

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There is an online yahoo group dedicated to those who work and homeschool. The link is below:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WORKandHOMESCHOOL/

I hope this is helpful.