It starts in September, sometimes in August, depending on how on the ball and gung ho the mom is.
The school room or learning area is dusted, cleared of last year's ratty notebooks and broken pencils and crayons.
The smell of freshly sharpened pencils and new crayons fill the air.
Brand new bottles of white school glue sit decoratively in sharp looking basket.
Unmarked workbooks and notebooks are stacked in a neat pile, eagerly awaiting a child to grab one of those fresh pencils and use it to learn and grow.
Mom and children gather in this picture perfect looking space sharply at 8am to begin their lessons. Things move along like clockwork.
For exactly one week.
After that, kids trickle in for 30 minutes after the appointed time, while mom mops up puddles of milk on the floor from a cereal mishap. The baby or toddler is running around with a leaky diaper, or perhaps none at all.
It isn't until 9:30 or 10 am for her realize she's still in her jammies and no one has brushed their teeth yet. This realization hits her when she needs to answer the door for the mailman.
It takes her 10 minutes to pick up notebooks and crayons off the floor before she can get started with one on one lessons.
Week two goes pretty much the same as week one. Maybe worse.
No one can find a sharpened pencil, and the glue bottles have all disappeared.
By November she is eagerly counting down the days until Christmas break although they are still 13 days behind in lessons due to illness, a basement flood and a surprise visit from Grandma!
December brings her bright baskets decorated with ribbons full of lovely Advent and Christmas books. She dreams longingly of snuggling on the couch with her bright eyed children, reading to them of that special birth long ago in a stable. Mugs full of hot cocoa and baked goodies will surely follow.
By Christmas Eve she realizes the only book in those ribbon wrapped baskets that have been read are Elmo's Christmas and 101 Christmas jokes.
She looks forward to January and February, the time when most people are hibernating. She envisions getting a lot of school done then! Time to catch up and get back on schedule.
Then the inevitable stomach bug hits. In a large family, that takes approximately 472 days to run its course through everyone.
She'll never catch up with all that school work! The books seem to glare at her every time she walks through the room.
She inwardly groans when she realizes that they will be working on workbooks well into July!
March brings a hint of springtime and the possibility of outdoor play and maybe a little nature study. But no. It snows again. On top of the mud. No one is going outside for at least 6 months.
April finally arrives, with hyacinth and tulips poking their heads through new snowfall.
Oh well, forget the nature study outside. "We'll study snowflakes now since we didn't get to it in January," she thinks to herself.
A stack of homeschooling catalogs sits on a pile of half finished workbooks, begging her to start planning for next year! Ahhh, a fresh start is what she needs!
In the beginning of May she starts crossing out pages that they don't ever have to finish. Having the kids work on the easy pages because Mom is too busy cleaning mud off the backdoor rug to sit down and teach.
Kids are fighting over the last two long-ish pencils with a hint of eraser left while the toddler eats the last crayon. The school room floor would cripple someone not used to Lego, Hot Wheels, marker covers, push pins and broken calculator pieces.
Just a few more weeks, she thinks she can push through until June.
They have to be done. The curriculum company has a shipping deal mid June and the old books must be packed away!
Hurry, hurry, the finish line is in sight. They will finish all those books, won't they?
She can smell summer. Summer camps are already applied for and paid in full.
By the last few days of May she realizes they WILL have to work until July to finish up. NO! They can't! Mom needs a break just as much as the kids do!
June 1 arrives. The children wake up late and lazy and stumble one by one into the school room. Their school books are nowhere to be found!
Curriculum catalogs strewn across the table bury the remaining dried out markers and the last glue bottle with the top cut off.
They ask where their books are. She tells them they've been packed away. They are finished for the summer! Yay!!
But don't worry, UPS tracking shows that the new curriculum will arrive in 6 business days. And school supply sales start next week.
She dreams of cleaning her school room and the smell of freshly sharpened pencils and new crayons.
Maybe a new basket for glue bottles?
