Thank you for your quick response. This is helpful

I’ll quickly tell you— but may do a longer post in the future.
I decided to go back to school for a degree. I chose a program with an adult studies format. This means I take one class at a time online for 6 weeks. So, I’m doing 12 classes each year, but only one class at a time. That makes it so much easier to juggle life demands with kid demands.
In terms of homeschooling, I chose a curriculum that was pretty well laid out for us. My older kids are very independent learners. My daily schedule looked like this:
9-10: morning basket with all kids together
10-12:30: older kids work independently and I work with younger kids on school work
12:30-1:30: lunch
1:30-2:30: help older kids as needed
2:30-5:30: school for me while older kids finished work and younger kids had play time. Older kids usually finished each day by 3:30 or so and would then go play with younger kids.
I’d also spend all day Saturday and a few hours on Sundays working on school work. Some weeks for some classes, I’d only need 2 school days and a Saturday to finish all my work. It is all completely doable. I just have had to go into each week knowing exactly what and when I needed to work on. Some classes were easier and required much, much less. I’m currently doubling up my last few classes to finish since I’m having a baby and that has required a lot more of my time. (My husband has been stepping in for me with homeschooling for the next couple months.) Overall, it has been just as doable as going back to school while working. I just have to view homeschool as my “job” and keep very scheduled about what I need to accomplish each week.
I considered operating on a year round calendar for homeschooling and only doing 3 days a week of homeschooling and 2 days a week of school for me. I ultimately decided against it, mainly for the older kids’ sake. The younger kids could have managed those weeks, but it would have been very difficult for the older ones.
I don’t think it would have been possible if I hadn’t gone with a true adult study program with asynchronous classes. I chose Trevecca Nazarene. Most classes required 2-3 “posts” each week, doing a devotion or interacting with the material in a discussion forum format and then 1 paper every other week to every week plus required reading. Of course, every program and every school is going to be different in their weekly requirements— just an idea of the work load each week.
Hope that helps!
LJ