Excuses, Excuses

I was just looking back on my recent weekly reports and if you just read those you would probably think we never did any lessons or schoolwork. We have had some things come up lately. Some things have been good (the Grand Canyon) and some not so good (multiple doctor appointments). In general I try to keep our mornings completely clear so we have good blocks of time to work. However, that doesn't always work as well as I'd like it to. And we made the Grand Canyon plans a year ago, so we knew it was coming up.

I did a few things before school started because I knew we were going to have some breaks before the end of the calendar year. I started lessons earlier than I would have normally, even before the public school kids went back. This was a major source of contention with my kids. They couldn't figure out why they had school every day when their friends didn't. We took it pretty easy and stuck to the basics, but it still gave me a little bit of wiggle room when I needed it. Right now we are working through the day. This won't last forever and it's not true of all of my kids, but we are schooling all day right now. My first grader obviously isn't and even my third grader doesn't spend the same amount of time as my fifth grader. But we are still working longer than we would have without the breaks. Of course the kids have recess and snack time and lunch. It's not like they wake up, start working and then go to bed. And since we have already taken a lot of breaks, our holiday breaks won't be nearly as long as they would have otherwise been. We're taking three instead of five at Thanksgiving and probably not two full weeks at Christmas.

I don't want to burn us out or anything and eventually we'll get back to a more relaxed feel around here, but for now, this is how it is around here. We've had a good few months of playing and taking trips and now it's time to make sure we are on schedule to accomplish what we need to.