Getting Back Into the Swing of Things!

I know you're just dying to know how my first week of resolve went....

As could easily have been predicted, we didn't do everything I had hoped to do last week, but we did successfully re-enter a purposeful routine. I banned TV and the Wii for most of the week, while we redisciplined ourselves, and there were some definite withdrawal symptoms, but everyone survived. As for school, some children had better feelings about it than others. One child spent most of the first morning in misery, moaning (and that's a nice way of putting it) about how they they felt like a SLAVE and how I was utterly lacking in sympathy. In an odd twist of sibling rivary - that yielded some pleasant results - this prompted another child to attack their schoolwork with fervor and declare periodically and pointedly through the day that they LOVED getting back to school and that I was the best mom ever. Things evened out, of course, and by the end of the week we were back into the usual swing of things, with no more than the usual sort of complaints. Unfortunately (I guess - I'm always at odds with myself about how I feel about this), the "usual swing of things" means that we're forging ahead with me feeling at least a step behind everything. Once upon a time I ordered my life with lists and schedules, and so I feel I ought to be have our schooling better planned and organized. I can almost see it in my mind's eye, but in reality if I were to wait for everything to be lined up just right we would never get anything done. So we read - and read and read and read - every day and hope that gets us to most of the places expected of us. We do some math and music every day, throw in some "formal" language study in the areas of spelling and cursive and grammar, make our way through history studies, stumble through some science (this is, besides art, positively my weakest area!)...Oh, and Aimee is still technically doing some Latin, although we're not, as the book admonishes, disciplining ourselves very strictly and memorizing everything as diligently as advised.

Confession: I'm really not very good at homeschooling. I was homeschooled myself, and whether this contradicts my current shortcomings or is a contributing factor, I can't decide.

But there's nothing for it but to keep on keeping on, as they say. We're in week two of this the second half of our school year, and so far things are progressing at a good pace. It would really be an enormous help if we don't have any major changes and transistions this year!