Homeschooling, afterschooling, and trying to find the right road

There are so many things that I love about homeschooling my kids.

I love sharing history with them, talking about ideas, sharing the same stories and experiences as a whole family, being there to see their Ah-Ha! moments, sharing a love of stories and good books, learning new things together, and making plans.

Currently, I really enjoy the curricula we are using for math, spanish, botany, and history. And, although we all like it less, reading is going pretty well also.

But.

But.

But I work full-time, and I feel pretty overworked by my job, the full responsibility for household chores, and homeschooling. Just keeping up with the kids' social calendars, after-school classes, and then their home lessons as well is a lot of work by itself.

But I still want to do some of that learning with the kids - I still want to read to them and do science experiments, and all the rest of it!

It's very hard to decide what I can keep doing, and if I can really do it all. And so we are seriously considering a small private school for the kids, that follows the Sudbury model and is very much like unschooling in a small group environment. I would still do some "after schooling", but I would be decreasing the amount I work on their school lessons. It would also decrease the effort I have to put into providing them a social calendar, as they would be with other kids during the day.

I hope this is the right road for us. Each family has to find what works for them, and although many aspects of what we are currently doing work very well, they run on the assumption that I can and should be a superwoman. As I'm just as human and tired as the next person, it feels like something has to change.