Homeschooling on a Non-Traditional Scheudule

Each year, about this time, I do a post on our homeschooling schedule. I laugh, because really, this is the second year, but still. Our household runs on an unusual schedule, and it is prone to changing at any time. It's not my favorite thing, but it's worlds better than Skeeve not having a job at all, so we'll take it, and work with it.




This year, Skeeve has been put up for something of a promotion - he's covering the maternity leave for one of the Team Leads at his office, which (hopefully) means that the next time a team lead position opens up, he'll fit right in. However, the schedule for Team Leads is set up differently from other positions. Rather than having a set start and stop time that doesn't change, his schedule is variable by day. For example, on Saturdays, he's working 8:00am to 6:30pm, but on Sundays, he's working 12 noon to 11:00pm. This idea isn't optimal in any respect, but again, better than nothing, right? So, with Skeeve's odd days, and his schedule running now Friday to Monday, this still puts the bulk of our school week smack over the weekends. This is phenomenal when I need to run errands on a Wednesday, but when there are parties or practices, those are inevitably on Saturdays and Sundays - when we would have school.

This year, we've only just started hockey for the season (Mad Natter is loving it), so it's still just a bit early to be completely sure, but it's looking like scheduling will be easier than it was last year.  We are still operating on a four day week, but because we're able to get so much more done at home that we could in a traditional school, it's not at all problematic. We're going to be a bit less routine than we ordinarily would be, but it can't really be helped when hockey is likely to start before the sun comes up.  This year, as long as the days continue like they have been, we're going to leave the schedule alone. We'll just slide hockey in ahead of our schoolwork, and shift the work until after lunch. So far, it has worked really well, the hockey allowing him to burn off a lot of his excess energy before we got started for the day. As it stands, it's still pretty stinky having our weekends offset from everyone else's, but hey, at least we're getting things done - and making the best of a crazy situation!