Back to School

This year wasn't really what I expected. I know, shocker.

I have been counting down the years until William would be in Kindergarten. I knew that once he was in school, I could go back to school too. I was able to finish my Associates Degree just after Haley was born, but I knew that with a toddler and a newborn at home, I wouldn't be able to focus on my schoolwork anymore.

However, starting school again has not been what I had planned. We started off the school year with all three of the kids at home. I thought that doing school with a toddler and a newborn would be tough, and now, I know I was right. Doing school with a 5th grader, a 3rd grader, and a Kindergartener was really tough. Luckily, they've been back at school for a while now, but in the back of my mind is always the thought that they may have to do homeschool again before the school year is out.

One of the big things that has helped me keep my sanity is keeping my assignments laid out in Google Calendar. I was able to color-code each assignment by class and set them up to repeat if they were assignments that I needed to do every week (like discussion posts). Each day I am able to easily see what reading/posts/video meetings/essays I need to work on for that day.

Not what I expected

Well, this year has not turned out how I thought it would. It's only halfway through March and already there's been so many surprises. Over the last few days I've been trying to wrap my head around all the changes. I know that this next month is going to be tough and my anxiety is not making it any easier.

One way my anxiety manifests itself is in the need to have everything planned out as much as possible. I've already scheduled out our day into one hour subject time frames, broken those further into 20 or 30 minute rotations between assignments and activities, set up a kids profile on both computers with easy links to educational websites, compiled a few activities for William to do in lieu of actual schoolwork, withdrawn William from his preschool for the next month, and set up a cleaning schedule. Today I've been setting up Abby's Google Classroom and hopefully I'll have the links for Haley's Google classrooms later today or tomorrow.

This whole situation is tricky for me because, while I am a home body, I have looooved working these past few months! I really hope this all dies down and we can all go back to school in April because I already miss it so much!

And for all of my fellow "newly home-schooling" moms out there, check out some of the activities I have on my TeachersPayTeachers. Everything is $1, and if nothing else, it will keep your kids at least semi-educationally entertained.