Finding the Joy Again: The First Draft

 I made a lot of mistakes this week.

I learned a lot.

I hope next week is better.

But I'm grateful to be learning, and I think we're on track to find our joy.

This week:

1.  We started Bud, Not Buddy.

2.  We started The Book of Virtues (We'll call it citizenship).

3.  We started The Witches (Too young? Yes.  Fun and comforting? Also yes.).

4.  We kept reading Gilgamesh.

5.  We started daily writing prompts.  

    100 words for the non-high schoolers/250 words for the high schoolers.

6.  We did our daily gratitudes

7.  We had our Morning Meetings.

8.  We did formal math.

9.  We had our American Rhythm dress rehearsal--first show next week!

10.  We started a project called Life Odyssey--more on that later.

11.  We started a family service project --The Crayon Initiative.

12.  We went to the gym once.

13.  We went on a walk and picked up trash around our neighborhood--7 grocery bags FULL!

14.  We went on a nature walk.

15.  We worked on decluttering our mudroom and sorting out winter clothes.

16.  We had an accidental archeology project start in our living room when we couldn't find a library book!

17.  We had library day (These pictures are from the previous week, but I forgot to post these, and I didn't take any this week!).

I learned that I need to give the kids a lot of structure for their Life Odyssey projects.  I sent them off with instructions that were too vague for them, and they got lost and frustrated.

At any rate, they're exploring 3 different life/career paths.  The idea is from some big university somewhere that I forgot to document, but the researchers found that by exploring multiple pathways, young people open their minds to more creative problem-solving as they meet challenges in making life decisions that are coming their way.  

Are Baymax and Lola rather young for this?  Yes.

Will I have them do it again when they're old enough for it to matter more?  Maybe yes--depends.

Will it teach them some research/writing skills?  Yes.

So, they're going to do it with the older ones.

We're devoting the whole month of November to this project for their Wednesday research, and they'll be writing about it alot.

Maybe we'll only get a little way through it, and we'll return to it in January.

I don't know.

What I do know is that they need me to provide them with some specific questions to answer to even understand what they're starting, and they need me to do some internet searching and printing of specific information to give them a framework in which to search (because most of them aren't safe on the internet, and library books don't have the answers to the questions we're asking).

I think the guided research parameters (i.e. find the answer to your questions in this article) will help them as a step toward less-guided research in the future.

The other major insight I was granted was that Baymax is the only student who can currently handle the level of school freedom I offered them this year.

Oddly, my baby is super practical and just knows that if he starts earlier, he'll be finished earlier, and he knows how to just knuckle down and get going.

Brother tries really hard, but lacks the ability to fight distraction.

Mister Man knows how, but is too dreamy and distracted by fun books to succeed most days.

Beowulf, his psychiatrist, and I are on quest to find him the right meds/environment/system to set him up for success.  He fails more often than he succeeds.

Ladybug is 16 and angry at the world.  She refuses to work most of the time, then hates herself for failing and takes it out on me.

Lola hits the nail on the head about 1 day in 10.  On that one day, she'll do everything like a pro, but the other 9 are exercises in futility.

Nature Angel is still overwhelmed with this summer's trauma, and in her own way, she's as angry as Ladybug is.  

I can look at seven faces at the table after Morning Meeting, give them direct instructions to get started on school, redirect half of them twice in the next 10 minutes, redirect the same half again and again and again, lose the other half (minus Baymax), and suddenly it's 5:00 pm, I'm trying to make dinner, and only Baymax has had his school checked.  The other kids either give up, lie to me, or crash into the kitchen with 5 subjects' worth of books stacked up crying for help.

That even happened when we changed things up this past week, and the kids only had 3 independent  responsibilities.  

I had an epiphany last night as I was pondering.

I'm going to start some time limits during the day.

A little bit of strict scheduling.

The kind of thing most homeschoolers avoid (though I've read of a few who've liked it).

I'm feeling hopeful.

Hope!

What a lovely feeling!