A few weeks ago (or maybe a few days ago?), I started to panic a bit about our homeschooling schedule or lack thereof.
Life moves at breakneck pace around here. ..I know this is the same for most households with kids and working parents and so forth. Our work-at-home, school-at-home structure is still very new to us, and calling it a structure at all might be a stretch. It usually involves the girls waking us up around 8am – which I know is L-A-Ate compared to the time some other toddlers wake up, or compared to people who actually have to get the kids somewhere in the morning and be off to work.
However… it is also our propensity to stay up late, usually working. And lately, the kids have been staying up later, probably because we end up finishing dinner around 7:30. It’s a cycle we’ve yet to break, or even really try to, because when we’re on the road, we eat and go to bed even later.
So anyway… Rod and I have worked out a tentative sort of schedule, that Mondays will be a family day off as much as possible (Don’t be hatin’… Sunday is typically a big, long work day for us and Saturday is spent traveling). For the rest of the weekdays, we take turns working and being with the kids. That’s about as structured as we got…
And the school stuff is…fitting in…which is what started my panicked rant one (hot) afternoon (when Rod had turned off the AC). I started to check with Paige on how she was feeling about her assignments because we weren’t taking more structured time to DO school.
Apparently, when i said “do school,” I clenched my fists and had the Crazy Eyes.
Paige laughed at me, and in her not-quite-17-years-old simplified wisdom, reminded me that part of the reason we have chosen homeschool for this season of our family’s life is because we don’t have to follow a schedule.
OK. Fine.
A few nights later, I had dinner with BFF-Jen, with whom I endured student teaching *5* years ago (unbelievable) and who is still teaching, now tenured and Master-fied, high school English, drama, and journalism. She was talking in passing about traditional block scheduling, which involves students taking certain subjects over one semester, and the other subjects the next.
Can you hear the ‘DING’ ? I did.
So… after discussion with Paige, we decided that right now, she will work hard on her Thinkwell Physics and Pre-calc classes. We will continue with Bible study, Spanish, writing, and ACT prep. But we will hold off on American Lit and history until she finishes the math and science.
Meanwhile, we just built in a stay in St. Augustine, FL (Even I remember this from grade school social studies… The country’s oldest city! Ponce de Leon!) during our upcoming Orlando vacation… So we *will* use that to study some early American history.
Because. We. Can.
I am still nervous about homeschooling – next post will be about Miranda and Kaity’s foray into Kitchen Table Pre-K. But there are moments that remind me why and how it works for us. Paige is in the kitchen taking her first Physics test right now; I asked her if she wanted me to pray with her beforehand, she said yes, and so I did.
I mean, wow, we have so much freedom to learn and explore and balance and discuss and honor our faith in this school… That won’t just show up on an ACT score. It will show up in life!
Photo: Paige & her friend E during our ‘back to school’ dinner!