Getting into a groove
Every September I start off with a bang, loading the homeschool schedule and asking way too much of my child and of myself. I want to fit it all in, cover every subject and have everything go smoothly. I do this EVERY year (for twelve years now!) and you would think I would know better by now. I end up very stressed out with a stressed out child and I doubt my decision to homeschool at all. And then I breathe....
The past two weeks I have felt like a spring pulled to capacity and ready to sproing off into the atmosphere! I know that my hormones were raging as well, which didn't help things. I was tense this past Wednesday morning, even though it was the first time in four years that I did not have to teach a class at co-op. I hadn't followed up on the classrooms being open. I got a late start. Dakota was on my last nerve. Same old, same old for the past few weeks, but I really felt like I was losing it. So I get the kids in the car, stop for coffee, get to the church, schlep my things in and get ready for chaos because we would all be stuck in the hall again...but the classrooms were open. Patty had heard my latenight plea and had stopped by before work and opened them. What an angel! And as the families rolled in, the kids headed down to their classrooms I saw that there was no chaos to be had. My 7-9 teacher walked in with a sick child, but her aide gathered the materials and easily took over. So at 9:30 I found myself alone in the big church hall, holding my granddaughter and reading a magazine...and things began to change. The tide started to turn. I started to breathe easier. My headache started to leave. About 10am I wandered down to the nursery and found all the other moms with little ones chatting and watching the kids. I peaked in the older classrooms and all was going extremely well. So I sat. For the next 90 minutes I held my sleeping granddaughter and chatted with women I value and who have all been there. We talked about the good and the bad in our lives, laughed at our kids and ourselves and related to each other. By the time the classes were over I felt so much better. Upstairs the kids played for a little while together and then we all headed home. I had loaded my planner with activites for Dakota and I, but I didn't even look at them. I let it go. We had co-op and that is all we need to do for Wednesdays. It's a day to get things done for me and for Dakota to have some quiet time to play and watch a movie or catch up on the things he finds important.
Thursday started off much better. It was National Elephant Apprecation Day and Dakota and I started our day doing elephant word games, making an elephant bag puppet and reading all the books we had on elephants. We did our workbooks, read about hurricanes and worked on spelling words on SpellingCity.com. We read the story of Cain and Abel and talked about what "I am my brother's keeper" really means and we made tp roll crafts of those brothers who were so very different way back then. We finished our Pirates Past Noon Magic Tree House book and decided together that we really liked it. We did "school" for a long time, but it was much more relaxed and we laughed and had fun and enjoyed our day.
Friday was the first day of Autumn. We definitely couldn't do anything with leaves since it's POURING down rain and all the leaves are soaked. We colored some leaves though, and did a symmetry exercise with a scarecrow. We read books about fall, did our workbooks, took a quiz on our MTH book and read another book about hurricanes. We worked on our state of the week, Pennsylvania, and did some fun workbooks, coloring pages and made a collage from the Pennsylvania Visitor's guide that I had ordered online a few months ago. We also watched the virtual tour of the Hershey's Chocolate Factory and Dakota remembered how much he enjoyed that when we visited there. It's one of my favorites too. I had a few more things on the schedule for today, but at 2:30 we called it a day and I left the rest for Monday. Tonight I am going to swim down to Spalding to watch my older son play water polo...oh no, wait, football...in the pouring down rain and my brother in law is, thankfully, taking Dakota to a Baltimore Raven's football fun night with tours of the locker room and a movie for all. I am very grateful to him because I really don't want to take Dakota out in this monsoon.
So nothing has changed, really, but then again, everything has. I have remembered what I choose to forget each year....we are homeschooling to avoid the grind. We do not NEED to work from 9-3. We do not NEED to get every subject covered every day. Some days, we do not NEED to school at all. What we NEED to do is enjoy each other and our time together because all too soon Dakota too will be grown and my homeschooling adventure will be over. Make Every Moment Count!! You can bet I am going to try.
The past two weeks I have felt like a spring pulled to capacity and ready to sproing off into the atmosphere! I know that my hormones were raging as well, which didn't help things. I was tense this past Wednesday morning, even though it was the first time in four years that I did not have to teach a class at co-op. I hadn't followed up on the classrooms being open. I got a late start. Dakota was on my last nerve. Same old, same old for the past few weeks, but I really felt like I was losing it. So I get the kids in the car, stop for coffee, get to the church, schlep my things in and get ready for chaos because we would all be stuck in the hall again...but the classrooms were open. Patty had heard my latenight plea and had stopped by before work and opened them. What an angel! And as the families rolled in, the kids headed down to their classrooms I saw that there was no chaos to be had. My 7-9 teacher walked in with a sick child, but her aide gathered the materials and easily took over. So at 9:30 I found myself alone in the big church hall, holding my granddaughter and reading a magazine...and things began to change. The tide started to turn. I started to breathe easier. My headache started to leave. About 10am I wandered down to the nursery and found all the other moms with little ones chatting and watching the kids. I peaked in the older classrooms and all was going extremely well. So I sat. For the next 90 minutes I held my sleeping granddaughter and chatted with women I value and who have all been there. We talked about the good and the bad in our lives, laughed at our kids and ourselves and related to each other. By the time the classes were over I felt so much better. Upstairs the kids played for a little while together and then we all headed home. I had loaded my planner with activites for Dakota and I, but I didn't even look at them. I let it go. We had co-op and that is all we need to do for Wednesdays. It's a day to get things done for me and for Dakota to have some quiet time to play and watch a movie or catch up on the things he finds important.
Thursday started off much better. It was National Elephant Apprecation Day and Dakota and I started our day doing elephant word games, making an elephant bag puppet and reading all the books we had on elephants. We did our workbooks, read about hurricanes and worked on spelling words on SpellingCity.com. We read the story of Cain and Abel and talked about what "I am my brother's keeper" really means and we made tp roll crafts of those brothers who were so very different way back then. We finished our Pirates Past Noon Magic Tree House book and decided together that we really liked it. We did "school" for a long time, but it was much more relaxed and we laughed and had fun and enjoyed our day.
Friday was the first day of Autumn. We definitely couldn't do anything with leaves since it's POURING down rain and all the leaves are soaked. We colored some leaves though, and did a symmetry exercise with a scarecrow. We read books about fall, did our workbooks, took a quiz on our MTH book and read another book about hurricanes. We worked on our state of the week, Pennsylvania, and did some fun workbooks, coloring pages and made a collage from the Pennsylvania Visitor's guide that I had ordered online a few months ago. We also watched the virtual tour of the Hershey's Chocolate Factory and Dakota remembered how much he enjoyed that when we visited there. It's one of my favorites too. I had a few more things on the schedule for today, but at 2:30 we called it a day and I left the rest for Monday. Tonight I am going to swim down to Spalding to watch my older son play water polo...oh no, wait, football...in the pouring down rain and my brother in law is, thankfully, taking Dakota to a Baltimore Raven's football fun night with tours of the locker room and a movie for all. I am very grateful to him because I really don't want to take Dakota out in this monsoon.
So nothing has changed, really, but then again, everything has. I have remembered what I choose to forget each year....we are homeschooling to avoid the grind. We do not NEED to work from 9-3. We do not NEED to get every subject covered every day. Some days, we do not NEED to school at all. What we NEED to do is enjoy each other and our time together because all too soon Dakota too will be grown and my homeschooling adventure will be over. Make Every Moment Count!! You can bet I am going to try.
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