What do you do When...

Did you ever have one of those days when you really just did not feel like doing school work?

O.k. you are either laughing, yelling at the computer screen or just shaking your head about now.

Of course you have. Every homeschool Mom gets tired of school! If you are an exception, please don't tell the rest of us. We really don't want to know.

Every now and then...during a week...I can think of about a hundred things I would rather be doing than working out a word problem with Chelsea or struggling with Mikey as to why it is important that he write a paper.

So, what can we do to make this a more pleasant experience?

1. Imagine getting up about 6 am to wake your slumbering children, cook them breakfast and get them out to a cold snowy bus stop.

2. Try not to think about all of the hours you would have to yourself if you did that..because...

3. Imagine them coming home around 3:30 or 4:00 pm with hours of homework and a chip on their shoulder about things that happened during the day.

4. Imagine trying to help them with that homework that you had nothing to do with creating and you do not understand.

5. Imagine getting them tucked into bed by 9:00 so that you can get up and do that all over again.

6. Now think about your usual schedule, (here is how mine looks):

A. Get up about 6:30 or 7 am to come down to my computer for some quality blog time.
B. About 8 am begin waking any sleepyheads who are not up yet. This is usually a teenage male..or two.
C. While they are getting awake I can slip into the shower.
D. While I am in the shower they get their own breakfast.
E. 9:00 am we meet in the Living Room for reading and history. These we do together.
F. About 10 am we split up for math, typing, french, art, music and science. We do not do all these subjects every day, such as typing, french and art. They are in the mix during the course of a week.
G. I meander between children until about 11:30 when it is time for Mikey to grab some lunch and get to work. At his work he does inventory, runs the cash register, takes phone payments, carries customer orders, unloads shipments once a week, puts letters on the sign out in front of the store, sweeps, empties the trash and more.
H. At this point in the day, usually, our book work is complete and we are on to real life learning or gym class, an art project, home ec or home maintenance project. We take field trips, volunteer and otherwise keep busy until Daddy gets home around 5pm. Helping a Grandma, planting flowers, cleaning the home, planning a menu, bowling with homeschool friends, homeschool co-op with other families, a sewing project...these are many an afternoon project around here.
I. There is no evening homework, unless you count Youth Group, the History Channel, Discovery Channel Science Programs, Crocheting, Silent reading, listening to music, Watching a favorite movie together, playing educational games as a family, having Bible study with friends from church. Now these are the kinds of homework that help us grow together. More than once we have been gathered in the Living Room reading from our read-a-loud book at the time at the kids' request until 10:30 or 11pm. They really get into some of these books!
J. Crawl, satisfied, into bed at whatever time the family activities are completed.
Stretch and thank the Lord that HE called us to Homeschool!

I am so thankful for the opportunity to get to spend all of this time with my family. It makes the monotony of the book work worth while. Does this look like an average day for you ...or how do you do it differently?
Becky K.