Spring Break. I think we will take a short one.
We did a “half” day today, meaning we started late and ended early. A full day here is only about 5 hours. After we finished reading and our Easter story, we headed to a local mall to check out their butterfly exhibit. Not worth the money spent, but we got some great pictures.
(the q-tips and trays are covered with gatorade to mimic the sweetness of nectar)
Monday I think we’ll enjoy some swimming at the YMCA.
Thursday we are going to join in an old-fashioned Taffy pull. Sticky candy and kids–what can go wrong?
I want to try and make our time a mix of fun and chores. There is a lot of cleaning to be done. It feels similar to when I worked outside the home. Yes, I am home more, and I do some more during the say than I used to, but there is still plenty to be done at other times. I’m home now, but I am holding the education of three human beings in my hands–that has to get top priority.
All of these plans look so well made, or they will be made, but inside I feel like there are a million jumping beans. I am wound very tight right now. I have so much I want to teach the girls, and we don’t have enough attention span to go on for hours and hours a day. Five hours is the limit (consider all of that is active schooling time, not stand in line or wait for other kids to obey time).
We just finished up a Lapbook and highlights of an unit study for Easter. We are still working on brain. I had these crazy dreams of getting through the whole body this year, but it’s April. Beyond what we are doing now, we need to review telling time, continue working on times tables, always reading, our living books biography study, and I have this Artist study I want to do with the girls. It looks phenomenal and I found several of the books it is based off for cheap (i.e. 1 cents plus shipping) on Amazon.
There is just so much I want to show them, teach them. It is hard to keep focus on our subjects as I am always finding new material we could cover; unfortunately, I have to make sure we cover all of something before we go on. I don’t want their learning to be fragmented and they need to learn to finish things…so we truck on. Focusing on a topic or two at a time in addition to our basic courses and trying to figure out how to get to these other things…
I feel very scattered and fragmented. This is homeschooling when the staff is on the cusp of mania. People wonder, I wonder, how do I homeschool with Bipolar Disorder. THIS is how. I put together our curriculum and material that we want to, and need to, cover and then I stick to it come what may. If there is call to diverge from our schedule, I analyze where I am with my mental health. Am I stable and making this decision to change our plans deliberately? Do I have a plan to get back to our core material and subjects? Or am I pulling us off a study because I can’t focus easily on it thanks to mania? Am I straying from the plan because of the depression or darkness in my mind? It is okay to make a change if it is done deliberately with thought to what it will do to our current course of action. One such change was the combining of our two Easter studies today and giving us a half day.
I’ll admit it was done a little bit because mommy’s mind is bouncing, but the impetus was the beginning of spring break around here. The public schools are closed today in our area and we had a chance for them to see a friend. I decided to go ahead with a Spring Break for part or all of next week because they will have opportunities to see friends this week that they don’t always see, our co-op is taking the week off for break, and we are ready for some time off. I did not take a winter break and regretted it. Those breaks are important, we all need time to breathe. And that’s me with just three students. I do not begrudge public/private/charter school teachers their breaks any longer. Wowzsers.
I have jumping beans inside me, but this post is reminding me how to stay on topic and course when it gets too distracting, and I thought it might help others to understand how and why we do things.
