This article goes along with my last three part series on why some children may not seem like natural learners and techniques that may help. Sometimes even "Natural Learners", and children who love textbooks and workbooks too, and even Mama!, need a break.
When Mama and the kids start getting the doldrums of being home and the same ole, same ole, day after day. We sometimes just need to take a "inservice", or mental health day. Call school off for the day, and get outside! Walk to the park, if the weather is not conducive of being outside, find a indoor play ground or museum, or even a mall and go get a Starbucks or Orange Julius and walk around! What ever it is, that you can find to get you and the kids out of the house for the day. Sometimes we even call another homeschool family to come join us.
Do NOT feel like you are failure if this starts creeping up on you, and you just don't want to do another day of school or be in the house another day. This is normal for all homeschool families and even teachers and students in public schools too. But, the great advantage of homeschooling is, we, the parents, are in charge of what we do every single day. And we can choose to take the day off and do something else, and come back to doing a more structured school day another day. Tomorrow, next week, or even next month. It's all up to you. The important part is to allow yourself to know it is ok! Do not try to push through it, you and your children will just be miserable, and you risk squashing that love of learning right out of your children. But, by taking needed breaks to spice things up, you can keep that love of learning, and go back to the structured things later with out fights, or forcing! And every one can get the needed break and feel so much better when you do go back to your more structured days.
This is one reason "Jubilee" schooling is sometimes preferred by many. The 6 to 8 weeks of structured learning, and then 1 to 2 weeks break, and so on. Works very well for many families. Because the breaks are already built in! But, also remember you don't have to have the breaks scheduled in, you have the rights, and the power to impromptu take any breaks you deem needed or wanted! Schools take many breaks all through the year. We aren't expected or legally mandated to do more or force our children and selves to be like robots and keep forcing when we need and can take a break.
You may want to also keep in mind what I have found in my experience through the years.
The beginning of the school year, most homeschool groups start in the fall, is almost always super exciting and people have had a nice long summer break and are ready to get back to the grind. Along with they are super happy that the public school kids are back in the schools and all the public fun places to take children are not so over crowded and it's fun to go to them again. So there is almost always tons and tons of field trips schedule. Sometimes several every day. I find in my area September and October, every single day at least 2 or 3 field trips are scheduled by local museums, zoos, and such, along with most the homeschool groups also have several organized and scheduled. As the year goes on, there is less and less field trips, til almost none of the places or homeschool groups have much at all put together. But, those first two months are almost always super exciting months for the year. And then things wind down to not so exciting, and then down to sometimes down right dread!
The first month can also be extremely overwhelming if you are too strict with yourself and your children. Remember that most curricula that you buy, is written for the first 20 days to be new learning AND review and will take almost twice as long to get through a day as the rest of the curricula. So keeping that in mind, start with only 1 or 2 of the most important subjects to you the first week or two, and then add in a little bit more each week, so you aren't doing 8 hours a day of school and wiping every one out. Or review each days curricula schedule and only do parts of it that you think your children can benefit from. You can even just do half a day each day.
When I was growing up, we did not have air conditioning in schools. And the heat can get up to 125 degrees where I live. No A/C and 125 degrees in the afternoon meant that kids and teachers could have a heat stroke. Once in a while we would have a teacher who would buy a fan. But, I can promise you a fan doesn't help much in 125 degree weather in a small class room with 30 other children in it! HOT HOT HOT! So depending on the temperature every day, we were in what was called Heat Contingency Plan for the first month of school (after the first month the temperatures would go down to the 80's and 90's which was more acceptable with a fan). What the Heat Contingency Plan meant was, if the temp was over 105 degrees for the afternoon, we would only go to school a half day. Morning only. And that was for K-12th grade. None of the grades were expected to stay in the afternoon in that kind of heat with out A/C. No one worried about any one getting behind. And no one that I know of, fell behind because we had a month of half days either! We just did reading and math those days. And maybe science if there was time. We all came out fine and we can all read, write, and do math! haha
Around February to April, I find almost ALL homeschool families, and public school teachers and families are just done! They don't want to do another day. I think it's awesome that most states schedule their homeschool conferences and conventions during this time, cause it's the time we need the boost the most! It's also a time that I start heading to the park, and we have more outdoor time, and nature walks to keep us fresh and happy.
So remember just because you need a break, or start feeling over whelmed, or your kids need a break, or are feeling overwhelmed, does not mean something is wrong with you, or that homeschool is not working for you. It means you are normal! And just evaluate what you want to do, and feel no guilt in taking a break!
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