When Life Happens: How To Plan for the Unexpected

When a parent takes on the responsibility of educating his or her child, it is a huge time investment. The majority of parents send their children to public or private school and are able to use the time while the kids are away at school to work, run errands, or take care of homemaking chores.

As homeschool parents, we have to do all of these things WHILE we are schooling our children. It can be really stressful juggling all of these responsibilities and demands on your time.

So what do you do when life takes an unexpected turn? How can you add or adjust one more thing in your schedule?

Maybe a new baby was born into the family, your husband landed a new job and you find yourself moving to another home, or maybe your husband was laid off and you find yourself having to help support the family income by going back to work. All three of these things actually happened to our family this past year.

Here are a few things I found extremely helpful when life was turned upside down.

Yearly Homeschool Plan was a Lifesaver

I have always taken a week in August and planned out our entire homeschool year. I love to plan and be able to see what we can accomplish in the upcoming year. So I take our entire homeschool curriculum and make lesson plans for each child and subject. I do tweak it throughout the year if I see something isn’t working out as planned, or the child might not be excelling with a certain curriculum choice. It’s easy to adjust issues like this.

I use Homeschool Tracker to plan out my lesson plans for the year. When our new baby daughter was born, my mother took care of my other three children so I could recover. We didn’t miss a beat with our school schedule. I was able to simply print out the schedules for the girls and my mother was able to help facilitate our schooling and make sure all things on the list were checked off. It was truly a blessing!

Our school schedule was also a blessing when we moved to our new home and a short time later my husband was laid off at work. We missed a few weeks of school when we moved, but we were able to adjust the daily schedules in Homeschool Tracker and pick up where we left off. Now that my husband is here at home, he is able to help the children with school using the yearly schedule I had constructed in August while I work from home as well. It has been a lifesaver.

Routine Chores on Autopilot

When you have huge life changes within a short amount of time, things can get out of control. The house chores can be neglected easily when other things are pressing for your attention.

I had scheduled our chores in Homeschool Tracker and it was a huge help to have those tasks in print to remind myself and the children what needed to be done to keep our lives running smooth.

It was also easy to adjust the house cleaning chores when we moved to our new home and had a different number of rooms to keep tidy and clean. Our chore schedule also helps my husband know what needs to be done now that he is home with us all day long. If everyone pitches in, the work is light and easy.

Life Goes On

Although we can’t predict what will happen to us, we can put systems and plans in place that will make our lives a little easier when the world throws a curve ball our way.

If you're looking for a solid tool to help with your organization, record-keeping and lesson planning, why not give Homeschool Tracker a try? We've helped over 150,000 homeschooling families since 2002.