| | I got a request to describe a day in the life here at
Crunchy's house...Well golly....I love an invitation to talk about our
day! So thanks! As a further note,
DrTiff has been talking
about the hard parts of homeschooling...and the struggles of what to do
about the kids' struggles, and how those struggle with our own
struggles. The tug and pull of life kind of thing.....
So I am going to attempt to squish together both ideas into one
post. Please...everyone jump in on this! Maybe something
someone says will cue others on what is going on in their families.
So here are a few struggles I can think of on the top of my head:
How much is too much to do? Or
Why is it that the more we do, the more demands come for more to do? Or
If siblings can't stand each other at the moment, why are they
magnetically attracted to each other...and just keep coming back at
each other for more rounds of misery? Or
How can you do anything concentrated and structured with one child when
the younger one(s) wants exclusive attention...all the time?
Sounds like every family's struggles at one point or another.
Only homeschooling , being the nature it is, keeps it coming all
day...and sometimes all night.
Wah!
Ok. I'll try to expand more on these struggles in a snapshot of a typical
day. But as I think some more, it might be better to describe a
typical
week, because it is hard to see the structure under our free-form life
in just one day.
A week in the life...
There is actually some structure there, when I think
about it. Here is the structure below. Most of what we do happens
before and after and between the structured activities, though.
We have regular activities to choose from from a
homeschooling group, and from community activities. We don't do
all of thee things every week...we pick and choose. Sometimes we
are up for lots of activity...sometimes not.
The only big-group activities we do are the homeschool park day and the
homeschool swimming times. But then again, the art class we do gets pretty busy, too. And
sometimes open gymnastics nights are an all-out zoo. Since my kids need
support from me in dealing with cacophony and certain strong
individuals in the crowd, it isn't exactly relaxing for any of us..although it is fun
for awhile.
We are pretty much a quiet (a relative term) introverted bunch, so we
thrive more doing things with just one other family at a time, rather
than in big groups of people. So Artsyfriend (my friend who took
the pottery class with me) and I get together once a week..Monday is
our day. Her kids have similar temperaments to mine, and they all
get along very well, so it is
relaxing for all of us. Usually it isn't anything
structured...the kids play, and we chat.
And there is the long-distance friendships with df and her
family. The kids occasionally talk on the phone, and send emails
and pictures to each other. She and I talk frequently.
We have family on both sides 2 and 3 hours away, and we see them
occasionally. Holidays mostly, with a few day trips here and
there..
So the rest of the time is filled with other stuff. Ds is easily
frustrated with the academic stuff..mostly reading. For the past
year, he has been frustrated at how much he needs to read to do things
on his own, so we have made
reading more structured...doing short "reading lessons" a couple
times per
week. This helps my itchiness to have him read, too.
We cover other acedemic areas informally...through games and
exploration and being outside. We have a garden, and special
opportunities come along, like the dove family that raised it's young
with us this past summer. We have the mountains, the
desert, a river. We have neat community events like the
balloon festival and concerts in the park. We watch tapes and dvds
in areas of interest and hoped-for-interest. We watch concerts of
all kinds of music and get rowdy and make costumes and instruments and
have fun.
We are gently easing into classes. Ds is leary of any class that
is too structured to allow some of his own expression. Dd is
really too young yet for structure. But we did find that art class
that allows much freedom.
And we have chores. THat has been the big thing for us this
year. I think this is important for us at this
point. It's easy to get caught-up in a "me-centered" universe
when the day is pretty much what you want to make of it. With
long thought, we decided not to do chores for an allowance, but
use them as a way for all of us to take care of our family as a
whole. I try to help them see that we
do for each other, and try to structure tasks so that they don't clean
up just their own messes, but rather clean up a whole room for
instance, to help them see this point. I think
this has helped.
It seems a fine balance between enrichment and
overindulgence...it seems hard to know where that balance is.
Especially in our instant-gratification, materialistic world.
Sometimes we go too far one way or the other..and that struggle to
find the balance seems constant. Chores help balance the inner
focus. They help when a child is bored too....there is always
something to do if the child is out of sorts because there is nothing
to do.
Chores and life skills are also a good focus when we are in an "acedemic" dry
spell.. df and I half-joke that if they aren't going to do anything
academic, then we'll concentrate on those life
skills...cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. At least they'll know
how to make a meal and clean up after themselves. That goes a
long way.
DrTiff was talking about how the more things her family does, the
more
activities her kids seem to crave. We have noticed that,
too. Artsyfriend says that on these exhausting days full of
outings and fun, that when they arrive home, her kids still come to
her and ask, "what's next?" What? Isn's 12 hours of
fun, fun, fun enough? Recently I have begun to hypothesize
that more activity isn't what is needed. The real need at this
point seems to be the need to be grounded inside...to face oneself
through unstructured time. Time to stop fighting just being, not
trying to escape with more things to do. So we have tried
slowing waaay back, with intent to lessen these episodes of restlessness..
This has been several days in the writing, so I am just going to put it
out there. Anyone feel like blogging about your day/week in the
life?
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| | Posted 11/9/2004 7:31 AM - 2 views - 5 comments
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