I’ve never been much of a worker-bee. I would much rather sit around bored than get up and mop my floors. When I had a job I had to talk myself out of calling in sick every single morning. When I was in school I skipped class more than I care to admit. Its not that I’m lazy (or maybe I am, but lets pretend I’m not), its just that I would rather be doing things that are entertaining to me. Obviously, this worried me when we began homeschooling.
I was right to be worried. There have been many, many days that I have just not wanted to do school, because LOOK! Something shiny! And more fun! Books are dumb!
And yet I made myself do school anyway. Eeyore is such a smart kid and I will not be the reason that he turns into some bum eating out of a dumpster. (At least, I hope I won’t be the reason.)
We only had three days of school the week of Thanksgiving and then we took the following week off. Eeyore’s daddy was on vacation from work so we planned on spending time together doing fun things. That didn’t exactly work out as planned, but such is life. We did take the week off of school and on Thursday I started realizing that I MISSED SCHOOL. I asked Eeyore if he wanted to read some of his history book with me and he groaned and then fell over dead because MOM, IT IS OUR VACATION!
One and a half weeks and I was ASKING to get back to work? What is wrong with me?
It’s made me rethink our school schedule. Originally I planned on schooling year round with a week off every 7 or 8 weeks. And then I changed my mind and decided we’d take the summer off like normal people. Now I’m rethinking it again. If I can’t go a week without this homeschooling crap how am I supposed to go 2 or 3 months?
I do plan on doing some schoolwork throughout the summer whether we go year round or not, because I think its such a waste of time spending the first month of school on review. But I think I like this year round idea better now.
I know that I don’t have to make up my mind right now. As long as we finish our year’s work then the schedule really doesn’t matter and can be adjusted to fit our needs. I do like having a plan though, which is why I keep dragging out my calender and counting off days and weeks and bugging my husband about what he thinks is better.
He could care less. He just wants the work done and in a timely manner.
And so I come to you. How do YOU homeschool? Do you follow the traditional August to May schedule? Do you school year round? Do you just start in on a year’s worth of work and when its done you start next year’s? Tell me, internet. What does your school calender look like?
[tags]kids, children, parents, parenting, homeschooling, education, schedule, calendar, learn, accomplish, year, strategy[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by suzyhomemaker, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
1 response so far ↓
AmyL // Dec 7, 2007 at 12:25 am
Lol. You must have been a fly on the wall in my house at one point. Keeping up with actually doing something every day has been a tough one for me as well. We wound up doing work until about July for the first few summers, at which point none of us could stand being inside anymore and we chucked the whole thing and started over in September.
Last year when the older boys were in 3rd grade I worked like a maniac to get them finished with everything by the first week of June. I really wanted to say “You did it. You finished a whole grade” to them. They definitely seem to have appreciated it, as they’re hoping to finish a couple of weeks earlier in time for their 10th birthday in late May. The cooperation levels have been higher. I’ll probably keep working with the younger boys over the summer, but only in sneaky fun ways and not tell them that they’re learning anything. It’s easier for them to lose skills if they don’t use them for such a long time when they’re little, so I’ll be doing what I can to reinforce that when nobody’s looking.
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