When you are a homeschooler, its very difficult to keep your life in water-tight boxes: the home and housekeeping box, the school box, the sport box, the friends and playdates box, the home administrator and book-keeper box and so on.

Things seem to overflow and work infringes on school time and playtime expands into chore time and our neat little 'boxes' get all messed up leaving us feeling rather unsatisfied.

And the only thing most of us tend to measure, is 'how much school did we do today?' and then we beat ourselves up over our poor performance.

As the formal school year has kicked off, in our home we have ambled gently into our regular 'school routine' and its still not going smoothly, but its going.

We started with one subject on the first day - half an hour of maths for each child, the next day we added a bit of reading aloud and the next day a bit of English workbook "busy work".

In between that, the children amused themselves playing board games, imaginative games with Stickies living in domino houses and building block towns.

The teens are responsible for their own learning and have also had a rather slow start, but are now getting back into the routine they know well by now!

Don't start out over-eager and then get disillusioned because your children don't meet your expectations. They are not mind-readers. You will just burn out with nagging, bad attitudes and stress etc...rather take it slow and start one subject at a time and train them diligently to establish one habit at a time, one chore at a time and gradually they will come to understand your expectations.

So, if you have already implemented full-on schooling in top gear and its not going so well, just pause and start again next week with a new plan, a more gentle, realistic and obtainable plan.

Home education is not a race. A happy home where a little learning happens is far better than a home with strife and reluctant, burnt out children who loathe their books and their nagging mother!