Can I just bang my head against the wall yet?

Well, I think this week-we finally hit the wall.  I should know better than to write how wonderful homeschooling is!  I think I immediately jinx myself.  🙂  Monday started off well.  I decided this week that I need to get back to exercising daily as I stopped about two weeks ago due to not feeling well.  So we headed to the gym for mom and then to PE for the kids.  The kids did some work at the gym but not enough in my mind.  I asked everyone to come to the school room for a little while in the afternoon.  Well, this is when the fun times began.  I had one refusing to work, one refusing to come upstairs and one who just wanted to read.  By the end of the day, one was saying “I’ll just start school tomorrow.  I might as well.”  In this situation “school” meant our local public school.  The week continued this way.  By Thursday I was ready to pull my hair out.  I just needed one hour to myself without children.  This is one of the downsides of homeschooling.  Sometimes you just need one hour and you can not find it.  Yes, I know-I signed up for this.

I always try to take some time to think about what went wrong and how can I make it work better next time.  I/we came up with a few ideas.

1. As much as I like to be able to go on a whim and do activities, they need consistency.  They like having a work period in the morning.  Unfortunately, PE (a class they LOVE) is in the morning so it throws the whole day off and since it is also on Mondays, it seems to throw the whole week off.  For me (yes, I know this is selfish), this totally stinks.  PE is not only fun for the kids, it is fun for me.  It is one of the few times that I get to hang with some grown ups and have grown up conversations.

2. My kids need to be outdoors!  Rain or shine.  We need to make sure we take time each week to go exploring or hiking.  They need this.

3.  They do not have to “follow the curriculum”  word for word and sometimes the curriculum is not right for them.  In my mind, Sims needed to finish his math curriculum prior to moving on to the next book.  What I have found is that he is going through the motions but not necessarily being challenged.  I also started having them all complete their math daily and they all (yes, this was unanimous) felt that it was very repetitious and boring.  They will continue their daily math, but we will change it up a bit.

4.  Some things we need to get back to include handwriting, small reading comprehension passages and more independent work.

5.  We need to include time in our day for cleaning-daily.  Since we are home all the time, the house is LIVED IN!  They play with their toys daily.  They are cooking daily.  They are in and out of the house which brings in dirt.  All the things that I love cause a lot of mess also.  We have not put clean up time into our schedule but this is a must.  We spent a lot of time last week organizing bedrooms, the school room, and our lives.  Now we just have to keep it up.

At the end of the day, I am still grateful for this opportunity.  No matter how crazy it gets for us at home, we are home.  We have the opportunity and privilege to change what we are doing and try something new.  Who knows, maybe we will actually have the house cleaned, school work completed, work outs completed and showers all in one day!  One can dream.