You may have noticed that not many of my posts have been about homeschooling lately. That’s because we haven’t really been doing any school for the last few weeks. When I got sick, we didn’t do any school, and it doesn’t take long for habits and routines to get all messed up. I tried to get us back into the habit of “school time” after I was feeling better, but it hasn’t been working very well. With the sun out, the kids just want to go back outside after lunch. Daycare Baby has been very fussy and demanding of late, and it’s hard to supervise school with a squirming babe in arms (who screams if you set him down and naps in little 20 minute stretches). And my own mind has been distracted by the transition we are working toward, getting ready for the end of daycare and the start of my new job.
All of these factors have contributed to the a failure to return to our habit of doing school after lunch. It hasn’t worked for us anymore, but I was so used to that being “school time” that it took me a ridiculous amount of time to realize that school can be done at any time of the day! A big Duh, but that hang up about time was preventing a fix to the situation. Once I start the job, we won’t be able to do school after lunch on three days of the week - so it wasn’t going to be a very good time to be stuck with.
When I was a kid, school time was always after lunch. Because my mom was doing daycare, and that was when she put the kids down for their naps. She always had little kids, and it was chaos until nap time. Then she would have at least an hour to focus on helping us with our work. It made sense for that to be school time. And it made sense for Carbon too, because I also had the little kids doing naptime.
Now that I’ve finally realized we need to adapt to changing circumstances, we’re trying out “Breakfast School”. Carbon loves this concept, because he gets to sit down to breakfast with me and also do his schoolwork at the same time. We don’t have all of the kids here yet, so it’s quiet. It will still be a time we’re home once I start working as the DRE. So, if we establish this habit now, it will be natural and easy to continue it after August.
I’m keeping Breakfast School fairly short right now, but it can get longer as the habit gets established. We start each morning with the ABC song, then count as high as we can. There is handwriting every morning. Then we do one of the following: history, science, spanish, or reading. I’m going to increase reading to a daily activity very soon, and put in more math besides just counting.
The timing seems good for Carbon too. He’s not too squirmy first thing in the morning, and he can distract his hands and mouth with food. The table is clean already (an important point for the ease of sitting down to do work!), and I haven’t had time to get distracted by any other work or projects. Hypatia is also sitting there eating, so she’s absorbing a little extra through observations. After she finishes eating, she’s happy to color while we work.
This should be good. I just need to make it feel habitual and then it will carry on with its own momentum.
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