Last Updated on July 1, 2022 by Brie

What goes wrong with time management as homeschool moms? I feel as if most days, I have no idea where the time goes, and I am on some rabbit wheel of life—bouncing from one rabbit wheel to the next. At the becoming of the month, it was decided that some things needed to change as I started a new job and went forth with life. So I began keeping track of my time a little better. With this post, you can see what it has been like for me after tracking my time for an entire month. Check out the build-up by viewing the rest of the series.

More From This Series:

• How it Began in November
• Time Management for Work from Home Moms
• Time Management for Single Moms
• Time Management for Homeschool Moms

Simple Android Time Tracker For Homeschool Moms

As a single mom working from home as a self-publisher, I use the android simple time trackers app for time management. The app is so simple to use. I set up cards for the things that I want to track in my life. I have something like:

• Work
• Homeschool
• College
• Playtime
• Cleaning
• Self-care/workout tasks
• Sleeping

After setting up the cards, I have to tap one whenever I start an activity and tap it when I’m done. It automatically tracks my time, and I can see how much time I spend each week doing what. This is a convenient way to track one’s time.

Time Management for Homeschool Moms: The Background Story

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am still, again this week, in the “trial period” for my next gig, which leaves me not having very much paid work to do. I say fortunately because I have been feeling very frazzled. I am still working my way through final college classes, and have also decided to do some deep cleaning. It is a pretty large undertaking. The current state of our home with the various toy bins being sorted through is overwhelming.

However, it will be nice to have it done, hopefully before I get accepted fully with work. It has been one of my more visible time commitments this week.

However, we have started looking at the Homeschool routine differently. I mentioned that I was looking to redo the homeschool routine some in the initial post for this series. Overall I began with a packet system.

Worksheet Packet System Failure and What Replaced It

We did the worksheet packet system for one week and while we did get a lot of school work done, it was like pulling teeth. This system did not encourage any kind of self-motivation for learning like I had hoped it would. Even the reward plan of offering Fridays off held no value.

So, I began taking some of our more sticky subjects and doing the “expensive route” with them, and outsourcing them to other teachers on Outschool to take care of. Reading is one of them. I found an awesome reading teacher we had been using for a little while and stacked on a few more of her classes to help with phonics as well as reading aloud.

These classes aren’t every day, but day one went really well. She paid attention and enjoyed the classes in the classes with small class sizes. However, there was one class with about seven kids and she thought it would be funny to hide under her desk during this one. Lovely. instead of using this time to sit back and get some work time while she was at the “very pricy in-home baby sitters” I had to sit with her in clear view and give her the eye every time she tried to bang pencils on the desks and hide under it. Even the teacher was like where are you. Oh, what a time.

However, it was an improvement from what had been going on in the last couple of weeks.

Interesting Educational Activities To Add To Your Homeschool Routine

We have made some very interesting additions to the homeschool routine over the month of November. Most of them have been Outschool courses. however, I still wanted to mention them.

• Hamster social: We participated in one hamster social class this month, which was an interesting experience. hamsters are not very patient class participants.
• Reading classes: We have three online reading/phonics classes added in as a weekly suplement to help inspire a love of reading. The books are really interesting so I think it is helping.
• Outdoor classes: We did one of the reading classes outside, on a very nice day. It was interesting because my daughter brought some of her last garden harvest to show off, and some other kids brought their cats to read with.

Adding In Productive Online Courses

Adding in productive online courses also helps me get some of my work done during the day too, which is a really nice trade-off. It breaks up our day, making a mundane homeschool day a little livelier and adds a great socialization factor for the kids.

What Time Management Looks Like for a Homeschool Mom

That little pie chart amuses me.

Top Five Time Management Activities for Homeschool Moms

1. Sleeping: starting at the very top of the list and working my way down I have sleeping being the number 1 largest time chunck this week.
2. Homeschool is the next largest time space this week and we did all sorts of really fun activities, lots of learning. I think homeschool is starting to get a little bit better. Typically every little bit we have to change things up, it is what we had to do for kindergarten. I just have to stay on my toes enough to be able to do that.
3. The projects started flowing in with my new job towards the end of this week. Towards the beginning I worked on some personal projects, blog posts, and building up some other writing stuff. There was lots of writing to be had this week, more than 90,000 words.
4. I don’t know how the hygiene and workout section gets to be so high. It seems like a very large number per week for things like walks, baths, make up, hair, etc. But I guess it is what it is.
5. Cleaning is the next section. This week seems pretty productive, we worked on reorganizing the play room and setting up better rotation boxes. It was a large portion of the cleaning this week. Unfortunately, one hour one rotation box later, and the room is again covered with toys. Perhaps less toys, but still. At least my caught thinks it is great

Extra Details

I have a variety of extra colors on the pie chart which represent other areas of my life. Luckily, I finished one of my college classes and have freed up more time to work since toward the latter half of this week my job picked up the pace.

Grammarly is the tool I use to edit my writing. As a bonus, it also keeps track of all the words I go through in a week. Here is a fun screenshot of my productivity this week as a work-from-home mom. I worked on a variety of personal projects this week as well as some for my work. However, I anticipate my work keeping me pretty busy from here on out.

What I Learned From The Time Management Series For Moms

I have learned quite a bit over the course of tracking my time with this mother. I personally found it not only very helpful but also very motivating to see visually where my time was going. Moving forward, it will be nice to have a good idea of how much time I am spending on my work, where we need to up our time at homeschool, etc. I will definitely keep using the simple tracking app, and I would recommend it to anyone who is struggling to keep up with everything.

One area I would like to work on is cleaning. I have seen that most people spend between 12 and 16 hours per week cleaning, which seems like a rather lofty number that requires a good bit of energy. However, I would like to eventually work upon this aspect as well and shoot for that goal.

Save Time As A Homeschool Mom With Kindle Unlimited

After finishing up college classes I began ditching the freelance sphere of the world and dove into, pursuing publishing as a substantial part of my income instead of freelance side jobs. Being an amazon self-publisher is an exciting career, and I love getting to create amazing products for moms and daughters and getting to write on my website to promote those products. Time management is such an important part of owning your own company and being a mom.

One way you can save time as a homeschool mom is by joining the Kindle Unlimited Program. This program can help save you time by giving you access to a library of over one million books for a subscription fee like Netflix. As a publisher and member of the amazon associates program, I have a huge discount to offer you if you are a first time Kindle Unlimited user:

• 5% off a 6 month pre-paid Kindle Unlimited plan
• 10% off a 12 month pre-paid Kindle Unlimited plan
• 20% off a 24 month pre-paid Kindle Unlimted plan

The subscription renews for the low price of $9.99 a month after the initial plan runs out, but you can at any time. I include all of my fun easy readers for girls in the Kindle Unlimited program so that if you are a part of this program you will be able to access them with your subscription.

Homeschool Materials Through Mommy Daughter Love

Mommy Daughter Love (M&D Co.) centers around moms and daughters. You will find many fun activity books, workbooks, coloring books, journals, and notebook recommendations for moms and daughters around the site. Since 2018, Mommy Daughter Love has been in the business of creating great content for moms with daughters. Mommy Daughter Love publishes on amazon as the M&D Co. and Brie Wetherby. With degrees in science and education combined, it has been a long but fun journey don’t the road to success creating this publishing company. The Mommy Daughter Love publishing company startup focuses on glittery or pink-themed educational books for girls ages 6-12, though younger or older girls may be interested in our content. 

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More Resources:

• To find more content and books by Brie, check out her Amazon author page.
• For easy peasy homeschool resources check The Story Based Teacher Store.
• Snag a self care journal to help you with being a single mother from amazon.
• Start a blog today with the help of a Bluehost hosting service.

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