This month feels like it is going ON and ON and ON. I guess 31 days in a single month can make it feel like the month will never end.
It's not a terrible month....it just....it feels like we aren't really getting anywhere.
I keep teaching my kids, we keep doing our "normal" routine of which books we work in and what subjects we study and where and how much we play outside....and the days, they all feel like more of the same. I start each day calm, and quietly giving directions, and about two hours later all thoughts and feelings that "homeschooling is working for us, this is fine, I could totally keep doing this for another year" fall away and are replaced by feelings of anger and frustration and OMG could my kid please just listen to me ONE TIME and do what I ask her to do ONE TIME without me having to raise my voice?
Well. So that's how homeschooling is going. The homeschooling blogs and facebook groups all seem to agree that this is a tough time of year in the life of homeschooling. So hopefully we just need to get past this slump of the wintertime (which, to be perfectly honest, is a low point in teaching regular school too) and then things will speed along until summer vacation. We've only got 78 more learning days to account for, over here, to reach our mandated 180 days of school, so we are well over halfway to the end of the school year. My kindergartener is nearly reading, and my second grader is driving me crazy because she cannot quickly add or subtract, but can very easily somehow do 4 digit addition in her brain without writing anything down....some things have been learned. Whether they match with what her peers learned in their computer based hybrid two day in person weeks or not doesn't really matter much to me at the moment. And I keep waffling about whether I would like them to return to the classroom in the fall or would prefer to keep going with this flexible schedule even though it means I am with them all the time.
January has been a huge slow down in the project realm, too, which is disappointing....I had high hopes of completing several items on my "wish to make, have materials" list. Indeed, I have not even finished some of the items that I had pre-cut for our quarantine beach trip, and we have been home for more than two weeks now. Between the extra sleep that surviving through inauguration without a true new civil war required, and the extra visits my sister and her children have been making to my house nearly daily, and the constant disarray of my home, and the need to clean out and re-organize MANY spaces to make them still more useful on a daily basis, it has been very difficult to find the desire to tackle ANY of the projects. I'm still feeding all of us five times a day, and keeping the dishes clean, and I sometimes feel like that accomplishment needs to be celebrated much more than it ever is celebrated. And to think that the children have the nerve to COMPLAIN about the foods that they are served sometimes....They will see, when they are adults. I am sure of it.
I *did* manage to sew one quilt block for the scrap quilt.
That quilt square is really pretty! I'm always amazed by people who can do things like that, as I am completely useless at anything requiring craft or art skills!
ReplyDeleteThank you! It is definitely not perfect, but....my motto for this year is "Do it badly," with the intention of at least getting some things done, rather than waiting for them to be perfect.
DeleteOkay, I have to admit that after reading your first paragraphs, and scrolling down to the quilt block, I may have thought for a second that it was a glass of wine until I saw the whole photo. Seriously, though, I really like your flower block. Hang in there. All we can do is whatever we can to get through these months and be kind to ourselves.
ReplyDeleteHa! Now I'm tempted to purposefully make a wine glass block!
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