As a homeschooler I know that being flexible is a must. Schedules always change, things come up, life happens. I’m pretty willing to just go with the flow most of the time and not stress out about schedules to much, but it is helpful for me to at least have an idea of a “perfect” school day. My perfect day would consist of me waking up at 7am, the children waking up at 8am, all of us breakfasted and dressed by 9am. We would then start in with math, move on to science and history, and then Eeyore could do some seat work on his own while I pick up the house. After he is done we would have lunch and read from our family reader. And then? The afternoon would be free to fill with things that we enjoy doing. Dinner would be on the table at five, the kids would take baths and we would all play together until the kids fell asleep around 9pm. I would then have a couple of hours of quiet time. That would be my perfect day.
Eeyore and I had finally managed to achieve this on a somewhat regular basis when my husband’s employer changed his schedule. Cleatus had been working days, 6:30am to 2:30pm, but he is now working 2:30pm to 10:30pm. This makes it so difficult for me and Eeyore to get our work done. Eeyore wants to get up and play when his Dad wakes up and I’d like to spend time with my husband instead of reading history books to my kids.
I really need to rethink my idea of a perfect day now that Cleatus is home in the mornings, but I’m hesitant to plan on doing school in the afternoons. It always seems as if something pops up at the last minute and then we’ve missed an entire day of school. Getting our work done in the morning means we are free to do what we need to in the afternoon.
Change is hard. I guess I just need to keep telling myself that rearranging our day isn’t the end of the world. Instead I just declared this week Spring Break so that I wouldn’t have to think about it. There’s always next week for school, right?
[tags]kids, children, parents, parenting, home, homeschool, flexible, schedule, plan, adjustments, coping, education[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by mtchm, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
1 response so far ↓
Chris // Mar 22, 2008 at 6:56 am
It took me a long time to figure out the importance of flexibility when being at home with young children. Mine are two and almost five, and I now count on having to adjust our schedule quarterly. Life seems to change so much with the seasons anyway, that usually, right around each solstice and equinox, I find myself making adjustments our routine. My kids are getting up crazy early these days (like 6:30–my oldest used to sleep in ’til 9 or 10!), so that’s meant I’ve had to adjust *my* schedule and get up even earlier so I have some morning time for myself. We’re also spending more time working in our garden this year–determined to grow as much of our own food as we can–and I decided we would not have any afternoon commitments until the spring planting is done. I do not want to miss a rare warm sunny afternoon out in our garden because we’re obligated to go to some class.
As grownups, and as products of institutional education, we can easily get caught up in this idea that we should follow the same schedule for a whole year or semester. It can be frustrating, until we realize the “problem” isn’t with our kid’s and our family’s ever changing needs for us to be flexible, but with grownup, societal expectations that kids and families adapt to some schedule. I’ve come to consider our seasonal routine adjustment a blessing for our family.
Good luck with figuring out what we’ll work for your family!
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