Time for a Break

One of the things that I love the most about homeschooling is that I get to choose when we take a break. I wish I could do the same for housework and chores…When I am planning for the school year I usually have set times for us to take breaks from homeschooling. Usually holidays and annual trips we like to take. But I also allow for times when we just need to chill. Now is one of those times.

Our next scheduled break is not until the first week of December. We have been nonstop working since the second week of September. That is 11 weeks straight without a break even for sickness (we have been healthy since the H1N1 in early Sept.) . It doesn’t seem like it has been that long but we hit a brick wall last Monday. In fact, the whole week felt like Monday over and over and over again. By the end of the week I was begging for mercy. This week has been only sightly better signaling to me that it was time be be slackers for a bit.( shall I mention that morning sickness finally struck this morning?) Yes, homeschool and slackers are not something you often see together. But guess what!? You should! At least every now and then. The last two years have been the best for us as a homeschool family. We are finally finding what works for us and what doesn’t. We have finally pieced together a “perfect” curriculum. And we have learned that is OK to take a break. Yes, it is OK to be a slacker when you need to. Otherwise, if you try to power through the rough patches every time, you are going to find yourself frustrated and discouraged. You are going to find yourself envying every other homeschool mom who seems to “have it all together” and you are going to start beating yourself up about it. Believe me. At some point almost every year, I find myself thinking that there is no way I will do this another year. Yep, I just did say that. If you can find one homeschool mom that doesn’t say she has thought the same thing at some point she must be  lying a saint.

But let me share with you how to avoid that trap. Take a break. If you are having a few hard days in a row and the kids don’t want to cooperate, take a break. I am not telling you to do it every time. Sometimes you will just have to power through it. But sometimes you need to take a break for yourself. Maybe it is a day or two or maybe even a week. Take the time to regroup, check your curriculum choices and pray about the situation. Look for sources of encouragement. Maybe you could change things around to make the day go more smoothly. Do you need to be better organized or prepared? Maybe the curriculum you have chosen doesn’t fit your child’s learning style and they are struggling and frustrated. Maybe you could just drop something for now and pick it back up later. You know, you can do that! And sometimes you will figure out that those kids are just rebelling or being disobedient and you have to get a handle on that before you can move forward.

You set the tone for your homeschool. Let me say that again. You set the tone for your homeschool. If you are frustrated, discouraged and unhappy with the way that things are going, guess what. Your kids are going to be too. So if you want a truly productive, peaceful homeschool experience sometimes being a slacker is what it takes.

So next week, while we are still going to be doing a little school for the most part we are just going to take it easy. I have found about this little thing called lapbooking. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you should check it out. I found a little Thanksgiving lapbook template over at A Journey Through Learning. The kids are just going to work on that because it is fun and they don’t really think of it as school. (but it is) And we are going to start our Thanksgiving preparations in the kitchen. Homemade cranberry sauce, rolls…maybe even make some butter.

Our motto is : work first and than play harder.