Could We Start Again Please?

I'll let those Andrew Lloyd Webber fans out there try to get that song out of their heads for a moment before I begin... Well, it's just not gonna happen. So, anyway...

Sometimes people can have the best of intentions. Sometimes they actually DO the thing they intended. And sometimes, it just doesn't work out. Sometimes, you can have accomplished a great deal, a HUGE deal, but still not have achieved the end goal, and without that goal, all you have done and worked for is for nothing. In fact, it was the opposite, it was not nothing, it was everything, only in the wrong direction. Well, that's what's been going on here. Those of you who know me know what I am talking about. For those of you who do not, well, I'm not going to get into it right now, but perhaps you've been through something like this. The only thing to do is damage control, and then you have to get up, dust yourself off, and continue on. Look at what happened, and what SHOULD have happened, sure, to make sure that history does not repeat itself. But in the end, all you can do is move on ahead the best you can.

Soooo......

The Chief is starting a new school year in September with the new 2nd edition of the Whole Child, Healthy Planet Curriculum Guide from Global Village School. I love it. I'm using it within the framework laid out in A Thomas Jefferson Education, so basically we are being very casual with it, reading books during "Kid School" time and discussing them. We'll be looking at different service projects we can do, things where we can help people and animals and our neighborhood. We'll be learning about different cultures around the world, and learning about our place in the world and how we fit into the big picture.

We had been using Five in a Row, and it was good and enjoyable, but I think we are ready to work on another level now, and the book in the WCHP guide resonate with me in a way that the FIAR books didn't. Yes, the FIAR books are wonderful, and we are going to continue doing those units here and there, matching them up where the topics are applicable. But what we are going to do is take the methods we learned from FIAR and apply them to the WCHP books. These books I feel will go a bit farther as far as the "Inspire, Not Require" because the topics actually mean something to me, rather than just being nice stories. It will be easier to inspire with these than it would be for books that might be nice stories but I feel are "young" or trivial.

The Chief will be going into Math U See Gamma, where he'll be learning all about multiplication. We've really been enjoying Math U See over the past several years, and I am glad to see it is Global Village School's top choice for math!

I've been kind of torn about the Workboxes lately. On one hand, they really help Elijah with his independent work, keeping him organized and on track, etc. On the other hand they are not very TJ Ed-ish... With the new program we are doing, I am thinking of kind of using them to hold things, but not as a schedule. I'll have to play around with ideas and see what works.

Good intentions...

I've been full of good intentions lately. I think many of us are. We all intend to eat healthier, read/learn more, get our degrees, exercise, write that memoir, do that charity work... In my case, it was write at least two articles for this blog every week.

Heh.

Well, life just takes over sometimes. And I think that is especially important to remember when home schooling. It's so easy to get overwhelmed and overcome by negativity. Just because you weren't able to do something or something didn't go as planned does not mean you are a failure. It simply means that something else happened instead. So you have a choice: you can accept what happened and work with it, or you can not accept it and work against it.

Acceptance: We can't control everything that happens in our lives, we might as well accept that. Once you come to peace with that fact, things begin to look much brighter. We can't control things, but we can prepare for the bad things when they come. For example, I know a woman who insists on writing her lesson plans in ink. Very non erasable, permanent ink. Not only thins, but she writes her plans for months in advance! When she is done, she feels a sense of relief. "Look at that, it's all black and white, perfect." But life is not perfect; not by most of our definitions, anyhow. Inevitably, strep throat strikes, or the flu, or an ice storm that leaves them powerless for a week. And then, the best laid plans... well, you know what happens to them. What does one do?

Well, for one, how about writing your plans in pencil? Or doing them on the computer so you can simply cut and paste and move things around. There are a few computer programs out there specifically for homeschoolers to plan their years, and they make it very easy to account for unexpected absences/delays. Then, just move on from where you stopped. Or, you can redo some things, cut a few things out of your year so that you can still finish when you had planned. At the Heart of the Matter Homeschooling Conference a couple weeks ago, Linda Hobar spoke about a "dateless planner" she used so that when things got messy in her year, it wasn't a problem. They just moved on. You can make plans per week rather than per day, and concentrate on getting a list of assignments done over the week rather than over one day. This way, if one day gets hairy, you still have the rest of the week to do that work. It takes the pressure off. And that's the problem most of the time. Pressure. The natural disaster is bad enough, but then you have to worry, are my kids learning enough?? Well, if worse comes to worse, think of it this way. What learning experiences can be derived from what is happening to you? How can it tie into your lesson plan?

When one child is sick, it can be a very valuable experience for your other kids. Accept your child's sickness and use it to teach your other kids about compassion. How can they make life easier for their suffering sibling? Maybe they can research how their brother might have gotten sick, or how he might have avoided getting sick. How can they avoid getting sick from him? You can get a whole year of science just from this, including nutrition, human body, weather, germs, etc.

Our other option is to not accept the fact that life is organic, that it is constantly changing and growing, and as such, is unpredictable. We can write out our plans in ink, and then... bang our heads against the wall a few times a year. We can pretend to be surprised at illnesses, at accidents and natural disasters. But really, is it worth fooling yourself?

So I went a few weeks without being able to post. Well, let's think about this. Why couldn't I post? I was outside playing with my son. I was making plans for my schoolyear. I was watching movies with my husband. When you look at the things that you DID vs. the things you planned to do, life takes a different perspective. What I see is that my family takes precedent over my blog. Which, to me, is just fine.

The next time your kids get sick, think about this--you are homeschooling! You could make them do school when they are sick, they are at home not at risk of infecting others, right? Does that sound crazy? Why? Oh, is it because your kids' comfort and happiness is more important to you than a paper plan? Instead of feeling discouraged by the delay in your plans, feel joyous at the fact that you have such a caring family, who care more about feelings and happiness than events that happened five hundred years ago.

You have 18 years to homeschool. You have only one chance at making TODAY happy for your child.