We have now had our first two weeks of homeschooling and I think I’m starting to come back to an equilibrium. Week one went very well. I had planned out a daily schedule for us to follow, which involved me getting up before the children and even had time slots for specific chores I wanted to accomplish each day. I’m very much a to-do list person, so being able to check off activities is what I need to stay sane. Being the first week of school, Emma and I were very excited and motivated, so I did get up earlier than usual to get myself ready, and I had bags of patience at the ready to deal with any uncooperative small children. Emma was ready to be a helper and learn whatever she could.
The first week this all went very well, and I am still pleased with the schedule we worked out; however, Sunday night before week two was spent with an unusually cranky baby who cried all night long so this mommy did not get up before the children, and her bags of patience had all been unpacked by 10 a.m. Then, due to my “wing-it” attitude, when we opened our reading book I discovered that when you buy old random books they sometimes require old random teacher editions as well. There were pages where the directions were “Listen, and follow along” (assuming the teacher had the directions and texts that needed to be read). Sooo…week two was off to a bumpy start and I kinda lost my mojo for last week. It seemed like all Arch wanted to do was cry during school time, and Emma was whining over not wanting to do certain things, so I was feeling a little defeated.
I ran into a few other failure-to-plan situations, and by Thursday was rising to the challenge to get it together. I re-organized and figured out what books I needed to get from the library to make Emma’s workbook make sense. I had also majorly slacked in the chores department, but the husband was out of town so I was able to get by on super-simple meals (eggs and toast) and not create a lot of new mess so that I could catch up, and now I am ready to go all over again for week three. Lesson learned: plan ahead. I’m sure Emma didnt’ really care, since my supplement curriculum was letting her play learning games on the internet, but my whole life felt out of whack.
I also did not meet my goal of starting on ‘A’ spice, but I’m not letting a minor setback stop me–just going to forge ahead and try again to make it happen. I should probably add it to my to-do list too…
Tags: homeschool, homeschooling, planning
The Daring Kitchen
