A working homeschool mom diary came about because I started seeing a lot more posts online asking if anyone worked and homeschooled. I’ve been working and homeschooling for over twenty-five years, when I was homeschooling my first five kids. At that time, I worked outside of the home. Now I have only one kid at home and in some ways it’s more difficult than when I homeschooled his older brothers and sisters.

My first alarm goes off at 8:25 a.m. I turn it off and begin to prepare mentally for my day before my second alarm goes off at 8:30 a.m. I went to bed close to 2:00 a.m. Such is the life of a working homeschool mom. When the second alarm goes off I get up and start my day, followed by our two cats and our dog, who have suddenly become ravenously hungry and let me know loudly that it’s breakfast time.

After feeding the cats and offering food to my picky thirteen-year-old Shih Tzu, I pop into my office to take a quick look at email. I need to see if there’s anything that I have to handle before starting school with my son, who is a sixth grader this year. The tug of war between homeschooling and working begins early and continues throughout the day. Thankfully, there’s nothing that can’t wait until we break for lunch at noon, so I head to my son’s room to wake him. My kiddo is growing like a weed and all of a sudden sleeps nearly twelve hours a night, so it’s hard for him to get himself up. The beauty of homeschooling is that he doesn’t have to get out of the house early in the morning, so I can let him sleep more.

While he’s getting up, I head to the kitchen to start the coffee and get breakfast going for my husband (who is semi-disabled and on partial bedrest), my son, and me. Our school day has already started – strains of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are playing through a speaker in the kitchen and when the television is on, a screensaver is actively showing the art prints of the artist we’re studying this term.

My son finishes breakfast, takes care of his teeth, and takes out the recycling and then we head to the living room to get more schoolwork going. I’m a Charlotte Mason homeschooler who uses Ambleside Online. We spend about two hours on school before lunch and maybe another hour to an hour and a half after lunch. During school I put my phone on vibrate and try to leave it in another room to minimize distractions. About halfway through our studies, my son is “really, really hungry!” So we take a moment to find him a snack after some discussion about why we aren’t taking a lunch break at 10:30 a.m. I assure him that he will survive until lunch and he reluctantly accepts a smoothie to hold him over until noon.

Back to school and we’re discussing Beethoven, the composer whose works we are listening to for our first twelve week term of school. We learn that Beethoven went deaf quite young and died in his fifties. Liam wants to know what caused his death and we go off on a short bunny trail. We discover that it was most likely lead poisoning that caused his deafness, lifelong stomach ailments, and his death. Now my son has something memorable and interesting to associate with Beethoven. My watch buzzes and I see that I’m getting a work call that I need to take. I hand my son one of the books we’re reading and tell him to read a few pages on his own while I go to my office to answer the call.

Fifteen minutes later, I return to the living room to find my son sprawled on the floor playing with his cat surrounded by Legos. It’s getting close to lunchtime by now, so I ask him to narrate to me what he read (narration is a component of the Charlotte Mason method) while I get his grammar and penmanship ready for him to do as I prepare lunch. He’s “starving” and says he can’t do his papers. He asks if he can have the remote so he can get his favorite YouTube show on while I make lunch. “Nice try, but not happening,” I say. He grabs his pencil and heads to the dining room table to do his papers while I throw some chicken nuggets into the oven and get out an apple to cut up for his lunch. He’ll also be eating some mashed potatoes and gravy and broccoli today.

Lunch is ready and he’s happily planted in front of the television. I go into my office and begin answering email for my various clients. I’m a self-employed virtual executive assistant. It’s great working from home and it’s also challenging. I often find myself working in the evening after my son has gone to bed. I’ve worked and homeschooled my son all of his life. Because my schedule is flexible, we can participate in daytime homeschool activities. I arrange my work around our lives rather than allowing work to take precedence over our lives. This means I work in spurts. I spend about an hour working at lunchtime each day and I often eat my lunch at my desk while I work.

Lunchtime over, I exit my office, and tell my son that it’s time to go back to school. All that’s on his mind now is how soon he “can get school done” so he can have his computer time. I remind him that once school is done, we have household tasks to do before computer time. We jump back into schoolwork, working on the dreaded fractions, and reading some Old English poetry that makes us both laugh. We work on Latin, read a portion of a biography of King Alfred, who we learn with amazement has a genealogy that goes directly to Adam, and then we listen to an audiobook reading of Beowulf.

With that we’ve finished schoolwork for today and it’s time for chores.

Chores take up about 30-45 minutes and with the dishes put away, the living room tidied, the floors vacuumed, and litter boxes cleaned, my son and I both head into my office. I put the password into the computer so he can get online and I go to my desk to begin working. I get going on placing orders for one client’s customers, and responding to support tickets for another client’s customers, then I remember that I want to make fried rice for dinner so I pop into the kitchen to get a pot of rice going and put tofu into the tofu press.

Back to my office for a virtual meeting with a prospective customer, followed by a webinar. We won’t be having dinner for a couple of hours yet, and my son is again, “starving!” I tell him what his snack choices are and get back to work. The timer rings to let me know the rice is done cooking, so I go turn off the stove and return to my desk.

I wrap up my work for the time being so I can go make dinner. I have to price a bunch of invoices, so I know that I will be working again tonight after my son goes to bed. We’re eating dinner earlier than usual this evening so that I can go to an art class at the library. I try to practice what I preach to other parents, which is that making time for ourselves is essential to being able to homeschool successfully. I go to two art classes a month, plus two community yoga classes. Making time for these classes has improved my mental health immeasurably!

I leave for my class and return home two hours later. While I’m out, my son plays Gorilla Tag on my VR headset. Many days this gives him 60 minutes of some good movement. When I get home, he gets a shower and I do the dinner dishes. Then we get a snack and watch a show together before he heads to bed.

A working homeschool mom diary changes from day to day, but what doesn’t change is that being a working homeschool parent is challenging, rewarding, and tiring, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Each day is a balancing act between meeting my family’s needs, making sure that I work enough to pay the bills, and meeting my own needs. If you’re wondering if you can combine homeschooling and working you definitely can!