What a great first week back to school! Over the break I had some time to think about why we weren’t getting as much done as we should be. I instituted (or re-instituted) some practices that had worked in the past. I realized that I’ve allowed myself to be influenced by how other people homeschool. That is not a bad thing in some ways. There is so much to learn from other homeschoolers. It’s wonderful to see neat projects that other families are doing, learn how others organize their days, and see their curriculum choices. I love interacting with other homeschoolers for all of those reasons.
BUT….
I realized that I had taken other people’s relaxed homeschooling style and tried to implement it in my home. Truthfully, I’m anything but relaxed. So while I’m trying to be relaxed by not starting school early, not worrying if I’m still wearing pajamas, and letting the children sleep as late as they want to, I’m really worrying on the inside. All that relaxing stresses me out!
This week I made my older son set his alarm clock. And if it didn’t wake him up, I woke him up. We got back to gathering the whole family together at the start of the day for prayer and catechism review. I had a heart-to-heart talk with the principal on Tuesday evening and confessed my first semester failure to get any history done. We talked over some possible solutions and I’ve added history read-alouds to the end of our morning group time.
I also got the two older kids started back on Greek. That had somehow been pushed aside during the first semester too. That’s painful after a 6 month lapse!
I reorganized the older kids school books and put everything into a small hanging file box. The other boxes that I’d started the year with were too small and not very sturdy.
I’ve still got some tweaking to do with the schedule. (Mainly figuring out how I am going to spend more time with my 7 year old, but I feel as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I’ve got 6 weeks worth of work scheduled for the kids’ core subjects, so now I’ll be able to spend valuable planning time making sure we get to history and science. I’ve even gotten along better with my older son.
Hopefully as a result of the changes, I’ll have some more things to share about out homeschool. We’ve been weak on projects this year. Right now we’re finishing up a model of a mosque that we made to go along with our study of Muhammad and Islam this week.
I went through that, too. I went from very structured to almost unschoolish in my effort to be more relaxed. I finally came to terms with the fact that I'm a fairly structured person — not nearly as much as I was in the beginning, but much more than I was trying to be.
It took me four years to finally find where *I* was comfortable. Since then, homeschooling has been so much easier and so much more of a lifestyle thing for us.
I am hosting an art giveaway that you might be interested in. Stop by and take a look at http://www.cabininthewoods-diane.blogspot.com.
Blessings
Diane
I am glad you had a great first week and that you found out what the problem was. That can be such a relief. I myself have been trying to put more structure to our day. I am a person of contadiction (as my husband would put it) so that, I do not like routine, yet like to have things done. Since routine and structure are good for kids, I have decided to go that route. It can be quite encouraging to read of others who thrive on structure.