My Career of Homeschool Mom!

   Last year was busy, busy!  We did a lot and learned a lot!  Homeschooling is really teaching me more than it is the children.  I realize that to homeschool for a mother, she has to make this her career.  Well, I started out my career has a mother and now I am just growing in the business.  I have now stair stepped up to take on MORE responsibility and work.  I have to make sure this business does not get neglected in any form.  The more I put into it, the better it will be.
   When I started it was fun and exciting.  I was a little nervous but, looking back I did not know about it just yet.  So, my nervousness was only due to anxiety.  As the year went on, some weeks I was really doing well and so were my children.  The moment I had a bad week, so did my children.  I figured out that all the emotion, the setting of mood, and the productivity of the day came solely from me.  Someway somehow I had to produce a school day everyday of the week that would work.
   I read and heard a lot of mothers like me wondering what everyone else was doing.  They were figuring all this out, same as me.  You start to wonder, when do I do the dishes in the sink.  When do I take time for laundry or bathrooms.  Im not a scheduled machine to where I can just whip out the same kind of work day everyday and it always be perfect.  My husband had some learning to do to.  He realized things aren't going to be as perfect anymore.
   When a spouse works outside the home, there is nothing disturbed for when they come home in the evening.  Yes, they still have laundry and regular routines, but everything is kept the way it was.  When you have a career of being a homeschool mom you cannot leave the home everyday, you work and live in it.  You become weary of your workplace and of home all in the same boat.
   I believe in field trips, hands on learning.  Anything to keep you doing something active with your children and other children.  Yeah so sometimes it costs money, but, hey you homeschool and you might as well make it part of the budget for that.
   What helped me a little in the teaching was to study how teachers and schools have their routines.  I felt blind in the darkness of not knowing how to be a teacher.  I didn't want to just have my children grow up to sitting in front of a DVD or computer completely or not really understanding the work, just finishing it.  My goal is to become a mother who is Mrs. Phillips, the teacher.  While it is so much fun to snuggle with my little girl while she reads to me in class and to play fun math games with my son, it is also important that  I have that role of being the one they turn to when they have a question and being sure that I know how to solve it.  Having no college education and being married young I am learning right along with my students.
   Im not perfectly satisfied with my first year of homeschool.  But, I will give myself and my children a good pat on the back for accomplishing it.  It is so hard to hear mothers talk of having to send their kids off to school.  Its hard because I remember the days I was able to do that.  I think to myself, how will I make this work to where I am getting something out of this as well.  Then I realize, I don't need a daycare for my children.  I don't need anyone to teach them.  I can do this!  I have the determination and I will make it work wonderfully.  My children will grow up to respect what I did and hopefully want to do the same for their children.
   Time to take on the new year with a 4th grader and a 1st grader.  We have a new one on the way due in February and are very excited!  The Lord will only give you what you can handle.  I must have satisfied Him enough this far to prove I can handle more.  I thank the Lord for my children everyday.  They are helpful, kind and considerate.  Even though they are young, they take on household chores and do their part around here.  God be with you all in your everyday career of raising your children.