Homeschooling Teenagers: Another Peek into Our Lives

A few years ago, I gave a peek into our lives of homeschooling preteens. A lot has changed since then. First of all, my kids have grown up. They are full fledged teenagers now, and they are both taller than me. They are smarter than me in a lot of ways too. This makes homeschooling them a challenge. As in my previous article, I will detail two typical days as no two days are the same.

Monday morning, I wake the kids around 8:30 and encourage them to eat. I also send my son to tend to the dogs. When that is done, they pull out their electronic calendars that I write their lessons in (Google Calendar) and proceed to completing their work. Occasionally, they will bellow across the house, my son from the basement, and my daughter from down the hall, with a question. I do my best to answer it, and if I can't I promise to get back to them and go look it up.

Around 10:30 am, when my daughter has completed her math, and usually her language arts assignments too, we hop in the car and go to her music lessons. She takes a lot of music lessons. Then we stop at the library or used book store on the way home. She is still a voracious reader. At this point, she finishes her schoolwork for the day, as does my son. When they are done with their academics, they double-check to make sure all of their assignments for their elective classes are complete. We have dinner sometime during this time. Many Mondays end very late at night as the kids have to prepare for Tuesday electives, and make sure their uniform t-shirt and lunch are ready to go.

On Tuesdays we get up at 6:30 and the kids grumpily eat breakfast. The homeschool program that used to be 15 minutes from our home has moved to 45 minutes a way, in clear traffic, so we have to get in the car by 7:15 to make it there for my daughters 8:00 am chorus class.

The kids may be at the homeschool program anywhere from 9 to 12 hours. With chorus starting at 8:00 am and drama club ending at 8pm (70% of the time), they are exhausted at the end of the day. In addition to drama and chorus, some of the classes they might take are photography, graphic design, musical theater, drama, piano, voice, art, and creative writing classes. When they crawl into the car they are ravenous and tired. I go through the Chinese or hamburger drive through so they can eat, and they are often asleep before we get home. They sleep in late Wednesday morning.

The rest of the week is relatively quiet and the kids get their academic assignments for the week completed by Friday afternoon. To break up our week, there is youth group Wednesday nights, more drama club Thursday nights, and the occasional party, get together, study, or practice session with friends.

This was an accounting of the school year that ended last week. Next year I will have a dual enrolled Senior who will take classes at the local college two days a week, and continue to take his classes on Tuesdays. I will assign no work to him, nor will I supervise in any way. It is time to get used to working with professors. My only duty will be to get him driving more and me driving less.

Next, year, my daughter (a junior) will continue taking her Tuesday arts classes, and Thursdays will very likely be spent out of the house too between her additional music lessons and drama club in the evenings. She will need to carry some books with her to study during her down times. The remaining 3 days of the week will be dedicated to academics like math, science, language arts, etc.