A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 In my last post, I whined about how our schedule is never-endingly being interrupted. I said I wanted to get serious about defending our school time. But I'm looking at our calendar, and there's not much end in sight.  The interruptions are already in place, and some are still arriving without my permission (via other people in the family), so I'm trying to embrace this attitude: A local homeschooling friend recently told me that she has 12 medical appointments for her family this week! That was the trigger that got me re-thinking my attitude about what is and what isn't within my sphere of control. So, I cannot change psych and dentist appointments because they depend on too many variables beyond my control. I cannot change Nature Angel's work schedule when she accidentally picked up a shift that she thought was outside of school hours but turned out to be during school hours. I cannot change when The Munchkin's bus is late. I cannot change when my kids have b...

 I am an organized person. I run our household on good, solid routines that allow for flexibility and keep us in order. But I'm feeling slightly insane at the number of interruptions to our homeschool days lately!! It's not the kids' behaviors that are the problem right now; it's other people (like dentists and friends) who keep demanding our time. I'm going to have to get tough about defending our homeschool hours. Tougher than I usually am! Of course, we still did good stuff.  Our Morning Meetings were particularly good this week.  Kids had solid questions and participated in discovering and discussing answers. The teens and I read the Thoreau chapter in our American Lit. book.  There's so much to think about when reading Thoreau!!  We also continued The Last of the Mohicans . Nature Angel was able to have an introductory class in welding via her church activity group. She LOVED it!   I think more welding is in her future. :) Little Princess passed h...

 I am grateful to report that we had no problems beyond the typical large-family-homeschooling kind of problems that are just part of life. Oh!  Except that Beowulf was made soooooo sleepy by his new med! His prescribed dose is less than half of what Brother takes, and Brother is not even a tiny bit sleepy, but it sure affects Beowulf! I cut his morning dose in half (his psychiatrist always gives me permission to adjust doses based on effects), and he's a little bit drowsy, but not so sleepy that he falls asleep with his head on the mini-trampoline, his arms on the floor, and his body up on the ottoman (which he actually did this week). If he continues to even be drowsy on this half dose, I'll take him off that completely, and adjust his evening dose so that he's still getting the prescribed amount every 24 hours.  The med is helping him control his moods (when he's awake!), and I have hope that we'll find the right way to administer it to him. The teens and I read ...

 Brother's behaviors ramped up a notch or two. I think it's because school is putting more demands on him than the freedom of the last weeks of summer offered. One day of school was interrupted so much that it lasted until dinner.  In truth, most of the kids had lots of free time, but Brother and I had a long, hard day, and he even missed a large part of our reading because he just got up and walked out. And it was Sarah Whitcher's Story --the favorite read-aloud of the week! Another day, he refused to participate in the science experiments because he was mad at Beowulf. Nothing helps him through these times of irritation but time and space--which is not conducive to a family homeschool.  Our choices are to go on without him, in which case he misses school, or to stop and wait him out, in which case our days get sooooo loooooong. We've tried both ways this week, and neither was very satisfying.   I am reminded that no one style of homeschooling fits our family f...