Any homeschooler that is honest would tell you that some homeschool days stink. No matter how early you wake up, or what awesome experience you are prepped for; it just doesn’t work. Maybe someone doesn’t feel well or a too late practice the night before. Most often there is no discernible cause. It just is. Sigh.
I love, love, love to sing the praises of homeschooling. We just sit around our kitchen table all day getting smart, basking in sibling on sibling kindness, and endless parental patience. Ummmm, no.
The kids had decided it was too hot to play outside. So where did I go? Directly outside into the blazing afternoon sun. It may have been hot but it was quiet.
My kids have spent the last two weeks like sloths, hanging off the edge of the couch, barely able to support their own body weight. There has been complaints of boredom, tiredness, and and a lack of purpose that could drive an adult with a mile long to do list batty.
As a homeschool mom I’m sure you have heard every variety of the statements below. I know I have. Sometimes it leaves me feeling a little deflated. Does our version of school look that unappealing from the outside?
Last year this time I used a lot of trees worth of index cards and loose leaf paper crazy planning for our school year ahead. It was our first year of homeschool and I wanted to rock it. I literally tried to map out how many minutes of each subject, each day, for each kid we would need to accomplish to meet the requirements set forth by the state of Ohio.
Please tell me I’m not the only one.
My husband calls it “my sickness.” I can’t stop inviting people over. I love having company.
I like rules, really, I do.
Last year this time there were boxes of books arriving at my door. Not just any books, but curriculum. Books a person would only order if they were planning to hijack their children’s education and take it into their own hands. Research had been done, questions had been asked, books had been read, reread, dutifully highlighted and flagged. Only those closest to my family knew we were even considering withdrawing our four kids from school and homeschooling. Even though hundreds of dollars of books were being dropped at my door it was hard to make the commitment out loud. I talked around it, mumbled, and acted like it was just this weird thing we thought about for five minutes. Nope, we were doing it. For real.