Just Another Manic Monday

Sitting here at the kitchen table and trying to make school happen around me. Which this morning, like most mornings, means getting last night's dinner dishes (need to work on this!) and the breakfast dishes off the table and at least to the sink if I haven't yet emptied the dishwasher. Then cleaning the gunk off the table so the school books don't get sticky. I think the thing I'm most looking forward to about the new house is a separate room for school work. Having the dining room double as a schoolroom is getting old. Anyways, hopefully the baby isn't screaming from exhaustion at this point and I'm able to take him up for a morning nap, and hopefully that nap will last longer than 30 minutes. Because now I try to get as much seat work as possible finished with the girls  before he wakes again. Seems simple enough, but there are so many variables. Most notable is the 2 year old wild man who is desperate to sit at the table with the big girls, but has not yet learned to consistently manage his personal volume levels. While he has gotten much better at his coloring and scissoring skills over the past few weeks, and has now lost scissoring privileges for cutting through his sister's schoolwork, it is his volume that causes the most problems at the homeschool table. Biggest sister has concentration problems during solitary, quiet moments. A single math worksheet takes an interminable amount of time to complete when she is distracted externally. Little sister knows this, and so will inevitably draw something in her journal about Big Sister in a deliberate attempt to rile her up. Anxiety is the all supreme distraction for high strung firstborn. This morning we tried lavender oil and five minutes of intense trampoline jumping to calm her enough to concentrate. Even so Little Sister had finished her math, handwriting and journal and had gone outside with the Wild Man, and Baby was up from his nap before the single math worksheet was completed this morning. I keep banking on the separate schoolroom space addressing this distractability issue, but sitting here writing it all out makes me think that a more drastic scheduling shift is what will help most. I think instead of trying to make "school" happen around me I need to rephrase that first sentence and focus on trying to foster an enviroment where learning happens around me.

The primary reason we chose to homeschool was to allow our children to be educated an environment where their unique learning styles and individual needs could be met in order to foster a lifelong love of learning. All too often I concern myself with making sure they are being homeschooled rather than focusing on the learning. A good self check this morning. Who knew even I could learn something in the midst of this chaos. His grace is good. His love is unfailing. And we press on, clinging to joy.