Sometimes despite any planning on your own part, any good thoughts, and any attempts to "do lessons" as we call it, the world has it out for you. And at some point you just have to accept that things aren't going to go the way you planned and salvage what you can.
This was a week like that. My car tried to kill me, Jason woke up one day in excruciating pain, and one of my good friends went through something amazingly hard and all I could do was pray for her and her family. Plus we were just really busy. We've spent hours at doctor's offices, had several playdates and other things just kind of happen.
So this week we packed up the work we could into bags and backpacks, tried not to lose too many papers, and soldiered on.
Harry worked on his math--it's still review, so that was good. He started Heidi but didn't get too far with it. I know he read Story of the World about Paraguay and Canada, but we haven't done the maps or other work that went with it. As for science, he did the book work, but we haven't had a chance to do the experiments that go with it. He's had ample time to read The Fellowship of the Rings while sitting and waiting in offices and we started Music of the Hemispheres. That was fun. Really. We sat yesterday waiting for Jason to finish at the doctor's office and made "whooshing" and "ssssss" sounds. That may be the best thing I take away from the week.
Sam read and read. He started Little House on the Prairie and Pippi Longstocking. I only assigned the first, he found Pippi and started to read. He worked on his math--skip counting by 10s. I know he read his history, but again we haven't done any of the activities for it. Sam did some science at the beginning of the week, but nothing since then. He also finished some grammar and writing lessons.
Both boys read a book from the library about the gross things through history. Now they keep coming up to me asking me if I know things like where people went to the bathroom throughout history. Yay. Harry and I have had some good discussions about slavery. We've talked about slavery throughout history and how it lead to slavery in the US. We talked about the time after the Civil War and how things didn't just become happy and good for everyone the moment the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. It's interesting to see him realizing that there are gray areas--slave owners weren't universally evil and northerners universally good. Again, I feel privileged that I get to be the one having these discussions with him and introducing these topics to him.
So, if I'm keeping score do I count this week as a failure or a success or something in between? We didn't get close to all of the work I had scheduled for the week finished and I there were a lot of frustrations. On the other hand, we did have some good discussions about slavery and the Civil War and the kids read a bunch of books on their own. I don't know. I know I like our weeks better when things are organized and things go smoothly, but I am pretty proud of what we did do.
But I won't mind at all if next week gets back to normal.
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