Here We Go Again

We are well into our first week of school and I am t-i-r-e-d. I spent many hours since the Thursday arrival of our material trying to get a good handle on my direction for this year. My first attempt at planning was to go through both of the boys' lesson manuals provided by the publishers of the curriculum and decide which individual activities we should do. That idea turned out to be very overwhelming. I threw plan one out the window and tried a different approach. I went through the first week of lessons and looked for the key concepts that were being introduced or reviewed. Then I went through the text and work books and found material that I judged worthwhile that taught those concepts. After that, I added my own things from my immense pile. This plan suited me much better and also fits the new flexibility theme.

Now...do you remember the schedule plan? EM was to start the day at 8:30 with JT coming in around 9:30. Monday morning both boys were up at 7:30 ready to go. JT NEVER gets out of bed that early. I decided to stick with the plan and sent EM downstairs to wait for me. JT was told he could finish breakfast and read until it was time for him to begin. When I walked in the classroom, EM was sitting at his desk with his hands folded. How cute is that?! That will probably be the only time it ever happens. My plan worked fairly well the first day. I felt like we accomplished some learning and some schedule adjusting. In the afternoon, we had an archaeological dig in our sandbox (strainght from the activity book for "Story of the World: Volume 1"). Hands on learning. Check another item off my new goals list!

The second day was a bit more of a struggle. JT had an allergy shot in the morning, so we had less time for schooling. EM was home with my husband and did some worksheets while I was away. I couldn't get the rhythm back that day. We did manage to do a couple experiments involving buoyancy from Janice VanCleave's Physics for Every Kid.

As the week has progressed I have realized this juggling act will require me to have less balls in the air. I am trying to pack so many things into a day, that I keep dropping the balls. Today we went with the 'less is more' method. We had to be somewhere a little after noon, so I planned very few things for the morning. We finished all of our work and I resisted the urge to add more to that free time. I felt a bit less stressed.

This weekend I will have limited planning time due to a Saturday family reunion 4 hours away. I think keeping it simple may turn out to be more complicated than it sounds...but I'll give it a try.