Last night I was whining at telling Hubby that I can’t wait until Saturday because I am soooo tired. School is going great but everything else is just piling up. I just need a day with nothing to do but clean my house. Blah blah blah. This is the conversation that followed:

H: You need to have the girls do more work on their own to free up some time.

Me: They do at least half of their work on their own. BUT I TEACH 5 KIDS!!! While they are working on their own I am feeding a baby and doing Phonics or Reading or 1st Grade Math or teaching the ABCs.

H: Well you should have thought about that before you had all those kids.

Me: It’s probably a good thing that I had no idea what I was getting into!

(FYI: we speak fluent Sarcasm in our house)

Jenny over at Life is Not a Cereal may have the solution to my woes. She does a 3 weeks on/ 1 week off schedule to regroup & organize. I am going to start taking the last week of the month off from our regular school schedule & see how it works.

Here are some ideas I have for our week off:

• deep clean the house
• catch up on laundry
  
• write out a menu for the month
  
• plan out the next month’s school activities
• make a list of library books we will need
  
• make those seasonal/holiday crafts that we never have time to do
• the big kids will work on a project, probably for history
• plan any Bible classes I will be teaching
  
• work on review posts

I am setting up my version of Dawn’s amazing File Crate System, which I think will go along perfectly with my new plan.

And for the cherry on top, yesterday I found a new planner that made my heart skip a beat. I think it was created just for me!! (the holiday themed pages! the lists! It’s so beautiful!) I am going to sell some curriculum that I don’t need so that it can come home and live with me and be my friend!

What do you do to keep your sanity while homeschooling?