A Quote to Start Things Off

""I'd love to go to Santa Fe at some point, Emmett said, but for the time being, I need to go to New York. The panhandler stopped laughing and adopted a more serious expression. Well. that's life in a nutshell, aint it. Lovin' to go to one place and havin' to go to another. Amor Towles in the Lincoln Highway.

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Pictures of Memories I

Pictures of Memories I
Snow kidding! These "kids" now range from 17 to 23

Sunday, November 7, 2010

The Dirt on Homeschooling.

My wife had a cool idea for a meme. She called it bloggers' remorse. The basic idea instead of talking the pretty stuff, the cool stuff, the things that WORK for their families. You talk about what doesn't work. For example,what really stinks about home schooling? What are the horror stories too awful to mention for the world to see?

This can be a challenge. It's so easy to post about the good stuff, the funny stuff, the cute stuff, the really cool stuff. Today, I want to talk about the not so pretty side of homeschooling.

Like having a 4 year old, outread your 9 year old. (More on that later.) Or, something our family is struggling with lately is a clean vs. dirty house. I'm not talking about piles of books, piles of clothes, piles of papers, etc. I'm talking about DIRT! When my wife was homeschooling, she was in the process of training the children to follow routines for cleaning, schoolwork, cooking, etc. (Read my lips B O R I NG!!) When I started homeschooling, I tried to do what she did. But one problem. I'm not her. I wanted to have fun, teach the children cool stuff, enjoy being with them 24-7. And I do enjoy all those things. But there's still a lot of dirt. Now, left to my own devices, I wouldn't mind a little dirt here and there. Neither would the kids. However, funny thing happens every day between 3:30 and 4:00 pm. My wife comes home from work. When she walks in the door, the first thing she sees is...you guessed it...DIRT. So I've tried to cut down on the school work and attack the dirt before she gets here, which frustrates me because, I didn't get as much "school" done as I wanted to. So either way, I am frustrated when she walks in the door, and sometimes I bark at her. And she barks back, and starts ordering the kids around. Clear off the table! Sweep the floor! Scrub the bathroom! Clean up after the bunny. So, at times in our dogless home, there is barking going on. We need to work on this. My first thought is, anyone selling a dog? If that doesn't work, we will need a magical homeschool genie to swoop down and show us the three easy steps to obtaining a clean home while homeschooling three active, creative, children. Until that happens, we're going to work on speaking to each other with kindness and love. And maybe, sweeping a little of that dirt, under the rug.

Keith Time: Amy Remembers Keith Part I

3 comments:

Mrs4444 said...

It's tough to balance it all, isn't it? Maybe just clean the entryway?haha

Chick Hatchers said...

You just totally described my house. And the after work conversation is similar. We, too, have become aware of how much more focused we need to be focusing on kindness and love in how we speak. Distribution of chores is still a challenge and the house remains a mess... If you find a system that works better, please share it!

Gigi said...

Very funny! Found your blog through the blog awards! Well, I cheat and have a housekeeper but the kids and I do a quick run through the house to pick-up everything after we are done with school which is plenty of time before my husband gets home at 5.
They also have little chores daily because they are still small.

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