Type up a weekly checklist for each child.  Make five columns for each day of the week, and under each day's heading list all the subjects that need to be done that day.  Instruct each child to check off each subject as he or she completes them.  At any point during  the day, you or your child can know how close  you are to finishing school by consulting the checklist.

Use your answering machine!  Nothing is more disruptive to school schedules than the phone calls.  If I answer the phone, not only do I lose all the time that I spend on the phone, but lose many minutes getting all my students back to their desks, finding my place in the instruction process, and backtracking to remind students where we were.  I check my machine often so that I can return any urgent messages quickly.  My answering machine message says something like this: "We can't answer the phone during homeschool hours, but we do return our messages as soon as we are able.  Please leave a message at the beep."

After schooling all day making dinner can be a challenge.  You may find these things helpful:  Crock pots, stocking the freezer with prepared dishes, and doing as much advanced preparation in the morning as possible.
15-Minute Cooking  A book written by homeschooler and friend, Rhonda Barfield.  It includes menus, recipes, shopping lists and game plans for preparing the food in two fifteen minute session each day.
The 30-Day Gourmet  A great book dedicated to the topic of cooking for the freezer. I love this book.  It has a lot of handy reproducible charts and good recipes.
Once-A-Month Cooking  This book includes menus, recipes, shopping lists and instructions on preparing a month's (or week's) worth of food in one day and then putting them in your freezer for easy meals later.
Helpful web pages:
Once-A-Month Cooking web page
The 30-Day Gourmet 
(my favorite... and if you buy the book (above) you'll get a password to unlock even more great recipes on the website)
Feed The Freezer
Crock Pot Recipes

Something else that helps is trying a regular dinner schedule such as:
Monday: Soup and Sandwiches
Tuesday: Chicken
Wednesday: Ground Beef
Thursday: Pizza
Friday: Pork
OR plan four, six or eight weeks worth of menus with completed shopping lists.  Rotate them and you will have a variety of meals without spending too much planning time.

If you have a place for a white board, they are great!  Use them for lecturing, demonstrating math formulas, drawing illustrations, temporary timelines or number lines,  for a student to practice letter formation....  A white board has so many uses!  You can make your own white board inexpensively by using the white shower surround pieces from your hardware store, then frame with wood molding.  If you don't have a place where you can mount a white board you may want to look for something called "Static Images" in an office supply store.  These are reusable large white plastic sheets that cling to surfaces by static electricity.  You can put lots of these up on your walls, windows, whatever surface you need to use for a writing surface, and you have a temporary white board!  Of course, you would use dry erase markers for each of the above suggestions.

At the beginning of the school year, take your text books and count the number of pages in each one.  Divide it by the number of school days you plan to have.  (allow for sick days)  This will give you a guideline on how many pages you need to cover a day.  You might also want to lightly pencil in goal dates on the corners of certain pages in the text book as a reminder to stay on track.

Learn to say "no" to activities during the day that will disrupt your school schedule.  Don't feel bad about saying  "I'm sorry, our schedule doesn't allow for any more activities right now".  Schooling should be your priority.

Helpful Links
Managers of Their Homes  This book is a great resource for "organizationally challenged" homeschoolers.  Or, for someone who thrives on schedules!   This is a great book.

Homeschool Tracker  If you would like to use the computer to keep track of your homeschool records this is, hands down, the very record keeping software that I've tried. I used to recommend two other programs, but the Homeschool Tracker has so far surpassed the others, I just cannot recommend the others any longer. Homeschool Tracker is superior because it is easier to use, and it has numerous features which speed up the data entry process. There are many things within the program which are customizable. Using it is intuitive, which is saying a lot for me, because most computer programs are not intuitive for me. In addition, the customer support is phenomenal. You can reach the people who wrote this program through email, instant messaging systems, and through an email loop where they are very active (see link for joining the support email group below). Whenever I've had a question, I've received an answer almost immediately. On top of all that (can you believe it gets even better??) they have two versions. One is free, yes I said free, and it is fully working version (without the bells and whistles of the paid program). It never "times out", so you can continue to use it as long as you like, and it is outstanding and easy to use. The paid version is superior to the non-paid, however, if you download the free version and use it a while, you'll probably be dying to get the paid version. The paid program is inexpensive, compared to other programs, and so far their updates have been free. The updates have been very significant, improving the program immensely, so it is simply amazing that they have been willing to allow their customers to get it for free. I'm sure they will eventually reach a point where customers will have to pay for an upgrade, but so far I've upgraded twice for free. Definitely, check out this program! I love it and it has made my record keeping so much easier.

Join the Homeschool Tracker
Discussion Group
Organized Home  This one isn't written specifically for Home Schoolers, but it is a great resource, with some wonderful essays. Miserly Moms  The book by the same title is a practical resource for money-saving ideas.

Thank you for your visit!

I would be honored if you would add this page to your bookmarks and sign my guest book!! If you visited one of my children's pages, please mention that when you sign my guestbook. It would please them so much!

Sign Guestbook View Guestbook

Our Household of Faith
Where would you like to go now?
Christian Radio  In the Kitchen  Homeschooling  Handwriting Helps    Homeschooling Tips   Our Books  
Missouri Homeschoolers   Our School Room
Fun for Kids on the Web: Hannah's Page  Parker's Page  Paul's Page  James' Page
Miscellaneous How Can I Know God Personally?

Graphics come from the Graphics Garden