Our new school year began and ended in one week. Record time. My children are geniuses.
Seriously, though, we got off to a great start with the implementation of school uniforms.
Turns out, I’m not the only homeschooling mother with students in uniform in our town. Folks were giving me the evil eye for putting them in uniforms. But I realized how freeing it is for me. When I look at them in the shirt and tie, it is a clear indicator that I am still on the clock. When I have gotten everything on my list taught, I release them to their play clothes. That also means that I’m off the clock. The boys know when I’m Teacher Mom and when I am Regular Mom. Regular Mom thinks that Teacher Mom has been more productive this week and Teacher Mom is glad that Regular Mom has had more time to herself.
…and then the seasonal allergy/asthma/bronchitis beast attacked again. The result is that we are starting school next week. How can you teach children who cough incessantly? Impossible! Teacher Mom closed the schoolhouse. Nurse Mom arrived and let everyone obsess with PBS television (loving Sid the Science Kid) between Robitussin administrations.
The kids are on the mend, the house is a wreck, and Regular Mom is holding her own. Teacher Mom made the official decision to not cover the three Rs next week. We do them year round and we consistently finished them this week. It was the other material we didn’t get to.
We are learning about explorers and just as we got revved up with Leif Ericson, the health declined with Marco Polo and that was the end of the explorers. That means that we’ll have a BLAST next week learning about spices, studying the constellations, and learning about Christopher Columbus and Prince Henry the Navigator. See why I couldn’t just skip this material? Here’s a pic of J with his Viking shield.
Hard to believe that is the same child as this one, calculating the area of a rectangle in square inches:
School was interrupted with UPS delivering gifts from granddad. Henry was disappointed when he learned he didn’t get one, but I think he’s recovering.
When Teacher Mom released the troops to enjoy their Viking shields, they decided to travel from Iceland to Greenland and set up Viking camp. Here are the chieftains of Greenland who traveled with Leif when he discovered Vineland and actually landed (which Bjarne didn’t).
I wish I had the video of the entire dramatization and all it’s iterations as the brick-n-mortar kids returned from school. The end result was 4 tents and lots of fun!
And here’s G, who decided that this would be a great week to start pushing through his lower 2-year molars. He’s been fairly drippy, but his mood is good. He’s looking kind of innocent and I later learned that he was sitting on the evidence (poured 8 oz cup of water onto my sofa).
Teacher Mom, Regular Mom, and Nurse Mom are looking forward to a productive weekend and are thrilled that the humidity is down. Smile, mom:
Leave a Reply