A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 Isn't that just like life?  As soon as I set a goal and work really hard to reach it, circumstances happen that get in the way of that goal. Last Sunday night, Beowulf had a really bad breakdown.   It was long and destructive. This is just a little peek at some of the damage. No one got to bed before 11 pm, and we still had some serious home repairs to do the next day. So on Monday, I let everyone sleep in, canceled school, and focused on recovery. Sir Walter Scott replaced drywall with 3/4" exterior grade plywood siding.   This will be much harder to break through! Nature Angel was pretty sick on Sunday, and Ladybug wasn't doing too well herself, so the quiet Monday was a really good thing anyway. I felt a tickle in the back of my throat, but I wasn't sure if it was viral or mental/emotional, so I ignored it and took the kids on a good long nature walk on Tuesday. By Tuesday night, I knew I was actually sick, so we stayed home on Wednesday, and I stayed i...

 I didn't want to write last week because I felt too whiny. "Our days are hard." "I don't want to do any school." "What are we going to do?" "Everyone fights everything I ask them to do!" "There's no joy in our journey right now." I didn't want to fill a whole post with those feelings in my mind as I wrote. So I made a change. I worked hard to get the kids outside for many weeks, but the effort was exhausting and then the time change came. I love regular time, when the cold evenings are dark early, and we can gather around as a family together. But my children are bigger. It was this past year that my little boys turned into big boys. Three of them grew about a foot and put on lots of man-to-be weight. They take up so. much. room. I've been treating everyone as if they were old enough and ready to do more studying and less playing. But they're huge, and they're still kids. If I reduce all of their ages by 3...