Changing schedules?

Once again, last night, the child was up again doing schoolwork. She did Math, Spelling, Science, and at least part of her History while she was supposed to be asleep. She is following the Learning Guide, and checking things off as she is going. I am starting to wonder if maybe the resistance I am getting is the time of day. Her natural rhythm seems to be late nights instead of early mornings (although I don't consider 9 am to be all that early).

I am wondering if I should just let her sleep in in the morning, and start school at lunchtime.

There are a number of problems with this though. With my health issues, the later it gets in the day, the less spoons I have. My brain gets sluggish, my energy drops, and my pain increases. If I start later in the day, it might work. I know yesterday morning neither of us could stay awake and ended up falling back to sleep. We got up at noon, got right to work, and were done by about 5:30. We had some arguments about watching the geography videos, but that got done. The problem was, her Dad got home a little before 5, and he gets irritated with her when she still has stuff to do after he gets home and they end up arguing and fighting. And like I said, later in the day, I am less able to deal with things like that.

Another drawback is that I *need* time to myself in the evening, after she and her Dad go to bed. I have very, very, little time alone, and I need that to recharge and to just be without anyone talking to me. Without that quiet time, I get very cranky.

Also, with dance classes a couple evenings a week, if we have to stop schoolwork for her to get dressed, drive a half hour to dance, be there for an hour, and drive a half hour back, and then pick up schoolwork again....I just can't see that happening. I don't want to "fall behind." I want to be able to take time off from the curriculum at Christmas to do "home ec," and bake cookies and make gifts. We are taking a week off in the spring to go to Disney. I want her Grandparents to come up in the spring, and do some tourism--yes, that will count as schooldays for the district since they will be field trip days (Boston, Lexington, Concord, Adams National Park, Plymouth, etc), but that doesn't get us through curriculum, and that has to be done too. Calvert is a fantastic, thorough curriculum. It covers a lot of material though, and with them requiring notebooks for some subjects, and me setting up notebooking for others, the curriculum can be time consuming. I know she learns well with this method, but there is only so much time in a year, and I would like her to have some summer break between 5th and 6th--she really didn't get any between 4th and 5th by the time we finished the 4th grade curriculum and tests.

I guess there will be experimentation with time schedules, and we will have to find what works for us best in the long run. At least we can experiment. In a brick and mortar school, she would have to work on their schedule with no room for change.