I have finally gotten to a place where I feel at peace with our homeschooling schedule.  Initially I tried waking my boys up at a certain time, having them start right away with their chores, then breakfast and then we'd start school.  We'd go from lesson to lesson with breaks only for snacks and lunch.  I was trying too hard to live out the ideal situation, which so often does not mimic real life.  And sometimes when we try to make these ideal situations happen, we find ourselves just getting through the material rather than really absorbing it.  For example, rushing through a reading selection without proper refection and discussion, just to be able to check another thing off of the list.  This method was not working for us, as you can probably imagine.  My son was bored, I was frustrated. At the end of the day, we had a lot of checkmarks, but not a lot of satisfaction. Not much real learning was taking place. 

I have a big conflict going on inside my head.  I desire structure yet at the same time I know we thrive with a lot more flexibility than absolute structure allows.  So I've found the middle ground.  Instead of scheduling each subject at a certain time, I have a list of what subjects we will cover on what days.  Also, instead of planning out exactly what and how much we will cover in each subject each day, I write down what we've covered afterwards. For example instead of saying we'll cover our Phonics Lesson Number 1 on Monday and Number 2 on Tuesday, I've made a chart with all the lessons on it and I cross them off as we do them.  So if we spend more than one day on Lesson 1, thats okay.  If we miss a day of school for whatever reason (like when our dog got sprayed by a skunk!) thats okay too. I don't feel like we're behind.  The other way of scheduling left no room for life.  Thats when I realized that this is my homeschool, not a government run school.  We can get the work done in as many or as few days as we want or need. 

So now I no longer wake the boys up unless we have somewhere to be.  I let them get the sleep they need.  I let them gradually wake up instead of rushing them to get started on their day right away. And I've noticed they enjoy school a lot more and are getting so much more out of it.  And I am much more relaxed and no longer feeling frantic all day long.  I have just enough structure to know exactly what I want to accomplish, but now I've given us a lot more room to choose how and when to go about accomplishing it all.  Its so amazing to me how different each family is.  How there are many families that absolutely thrive on a strict schedule, and many who thrive on no schedule at all.  And then there are families like ours who need a little of both.  That is the amazing thing about homeschooling.  You can do whatever works for your own family.

Another change I've made is having more individual "preschool" time with my two younger "students".  At first I thought my oldest two could do all their work together, since they are only 20 months apart.  But I found myself being more attentive to my 5 year old, since he was the one who was actually school aged and supposed to be doing "real" school.  My almost 4 year old was oftentimes getting lost in the shuffle. Now I have one-on-one time with each child, which does take more time than combining everything, but in the long run is better for everyone, myself included.  I enjoy spending this one-on-one time with each child, and they feel as though they are getting the time they deserve.

All in all, I am feeling much more satisfied at the end of the day.  We get done what we can, and don't stress over what we don't get done.  Most days we are indeed getting it all done, but now I feel a much deeper sense of peace and satisfaction as I make my checkmarks.  I am finally reaping the benefits of our lifestyle and am so grateful to have the privilege of being my sons' teacher.  My three sons whom I love so much are teaching me more than I could possibly ever teach them. I am now fully feeling the true joy that is homeschooling.