When you make the choice to homeschool, life can become overwhelming rather
quickly, especially if you enjoy being organized.
On top of being the Domestic Engineer in the house, now you are the Educator-in-Residence,
and the demands on your time have possibly more than doubled. What to do?
Some of us who are task oriented—the ones who live by their schedules and
to-do lists (and their contentment comes from how much they get done)—will
tend to ramp up the output requirements, plowing through curriculum for the
sake of getting it done because, after all, we bought it so we should use it,
right?
And then some of us who are
relationship oriented will veer off topic if a child asks a question, and we can
end up looking at so many different websites or books that it is hard to
remember where we started and what the goal was in the first place—but we had
fun together, didn’t we?
You can probably see issues with both sides of this coin. All of us,
even the ones who struggle with organization, will have to get a grip on our
days in some fashion, in order to survive. And all of us, even the ones who thrive on organization, will have to realize we can't do it all and some things will have to slide. And guess what? That is okay!
“What things should I let go?” some of
you may ask. That depends on you and your family.
Maybe you won’t wash the sheets on
all the beds every week like you normally
do; or maybe you eat breakfast for dinner some days; or maybe
(gasp!) you
buy your bread instead of making it. Whatever it is, choose
something that doesn’t have eternal consequences (like leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight) and let it slide (so you can read to your kids before bedtime).
The biggest caution I would give is in an area where I struggle—treating your
children’s education as another thing to accomplish during the day. This is
where those who are task oriented can get bogged down and feel like they are
failing their kids, simply because they didn’t finish what was on that day’s
lesson plans.
You are not failing your kids! Your are not messing them up! Those are big fat lies from the enemy!
Your kids love you and they want your time and your focused attention. If
you are in a rut and you feel like school is a hamster wheel—which is tempting
when testing is around the corner—then shake up the routine.
Spend the day
reading lots of books to your kids. Do some
fun games that teach skills but don’t
feel like learning. Make some crafts! If you hate messes, there are many
paper crafts that you can do that don’t involve paints or glue. Put on a puppet
show so they can act out something they’ve learned recently.
The best way to lean more heavily on the relationship scale is to slow down
and spend time with your kids, on their level. Truly enjoy the time we have with them,
before they are grown and gone. Thank God for their smiles, their messes, their
fits. God has anointed us to help them to see His perspective, and in order to do
that,
we need to see it first.
We will have snacks served throughout classes tomorrow, for a day-late celebration of Valentine's Day. Please remember to bring your goodies that you signed up for last week. If you were absent, or didn't sign up for some other reason, don't worry about it. Just come and enjoy the fellowship and sweet treats tomorrow.
