The Pendulum of Motherhood and Homeschool

There are days when motherhood seems like a conspiracy that I created and is perpetuated by 4 conniving, charming children with an impeccable sense of timing. There has been a torrent of vomit and diarrhea and when the river seems to abate the flood starts up again. So while I was rushing the littlest into the bathtub to contain her river, the little man was downstairs getting himself into our pantry of unopened items.

One disaster at a time, right?

Another was bouncing off the walls from a sugar high and the last was in a puddle of tears from fatigue. Kent was out for the worst of it but somehow I survived that night.

Then there are the picture perfect days where all is right with the world. We work as a team to set up an above ground pool with plenty of wet fun in between. Get our chores done quickly to do our shopping, oldest two bake muffins for lunch and listen to a podcast learning all about yeast, baking soda and powder. The late afternoon finds us with a quick lessons on parts of speech and fun with mad libs. (why must all their verbs be bathroom related?!!?)

Such is the pendulum of motherhood! Thankfully most days fall in the middle with only moments at either end!

I recently spoke to another mother who homeschools and was inspired by her to begin recording what I do in the day rather than look at my list of unchecked items. I realize that we are covering more material than I had thought because I was still needing to 'unschool' my frame of mind. The scripture reading we do as a family (which we could never manage to fit in before) first thing in the morning has Bug-love reading sight words much quicker in addition to learning new words. Bud is learning the nuances of tone, pronunciation and rhythm and we all share in a little spiritual feeding to start our day.

Shopping trips have had my children drooling over toys they see and calculating how much money they have yet to save to be able to buy the coveted item. Incidentally, this has been the drive for Bug to do math. I printed a 1-100 grid, we colored numbers in by five, learned the values to each coin and use that paper to add. First we place the largest coin according to it's worth (example, quarter at 25) then each additional coin to count up to it's worth and place it in it's next spot. She's notices that all the 'silver' coins land on the areas colored by 5s (so long as she starts with anything other than a penny) and has begun easily recognizing the higher numbers. This has lead to a game of 'store' where she labels random items that I purchase and give her money for. She then adds up the items to either give me change or ask for more. It's a bit laborious with the paper, but she's conquering math without even knowing it and seeing the value of it.

Even on our worst sick days there is always reading or listening to our books on tape. They've since learned all sorts of vocabulary that they find amusing to use. We've continued with Anne of Avonllea and they have looked up words like 'bane' and 'agony'. It wasn't all too surprising to hear Bu-love tell me that Leora was crying and in the depths of agony. Out of date phrases have also cropped up, such as,"Mark my word ...."

We've had some relaxation ;time daily which was lisening to some imagery scripts but Isaac was dying with having to stay still so we made a switch to yoga. We found a fun channel called Cosmic Yoga where the hostess tells stories and you mimic her movements. She's a great story teller and Isaac loves it. He is learning something new while hearing some favorite stories.

Some backyard fun.

Recording what we did really did give me better perspective on what I was accomplishing here at home and perhaps I don't give my children or myself enough credit. I'm so glad we're on this journey together!