Thursday, January 7, 2010

A Not So Good School Day

Well, in case you think that here at the Johnson Homeschool every day is smooth sailing, and all of my students are bright-eyed and bushy tailed, think again!

Yesterday was the our first day back to school after a three week Christmas break, and it just did not go very well at all! It began when my children WOULD NOT get out of bed! During our holiday we had gotten into the habit of staying up pretty late, and they had not been rising before 8 or 9 AM, so getting up at 7:00 AM this morning was tough. Their dragging around put us behind from the start. Then some of my children (I am not going to name any names!) were less than happy to have to shorten their "watching TV in my bed while drinking chocolate milk time" because they slept later than I intended and we needed to begin the Bible lesson. Another child reported that she had no "soft pants" clean to wear (this child recently had a growth spurt, and has only one pair of "soft pants"--the kind they like to wear around the house--so I had to delay the start of our Bible lesson, and go down to the storage room and dig through the (thankfully, labeled) hand-me-down boxes to find some "soft pants" in this child's size. I found one pair! So now I have added a little bit of shopping to my to-do list.

We began our Bible lesson....about 45 minutes later than I intended.
One child refused to recite our memory verses, and had to be disciplined......this same child was disciplined later on in the morning for continuing with her poor attitude.

We moved to the den for our read aloud time. We are in the middle of a book that we started before our break. I had to spend a few minutes looking back to refresh my memory....meanwhile one child began sighing, asking when I would be through reading aloud so he could get started with his schoolwork. I reminded him that this WAS school. This same child continued to show signs of disinterest throughout my reading aloud. Other children interrupted 12 times to ask non-important questions, and another child wanted to play with his electric train while I read.

Olivia and I both forgot how to do some of her algebra problems, and the lesson took us almost an hour! During this time, two of my children were supposed to be playing upstairs in their room, but instead stayed in the den, running around so that it sounded like a herd of horses the entire time Olivia and I were doing algebra. When I asked the older of the two wild children why they were not playing upstairs, their response was, "Oh, I forgot."

The morning continued......one child just was a grump the entire morning, and spent an hour on trying to unscramble 8 or so prepositions (part of the first page in a new Easy Grammar book). We ate lunch without this child because he was working at a snail's pace just because he was unhappy. He finally finished his schoolwork around 2:00....much, much later than usual.

Everyone was a little rusty in math, and I can tell that we are all out of our hard-working, school routine. I am trying to be patient and smile in spite of it all.

Even on bad days, I am so grateful for the opportunity to homeschool my precious children. There is nothing else I would rather be doing!

Today will be better!!

6 comments:

  1. That is too funny, well not really, but I laughed anyway. My kids were grumbling on Tuesday about starting also. I don't know if we will get much done today, or if I should just have a snow day like the rest of our county. By the way, your day sounds so much like some of our days that it is refreshing to know that it is not just my kids who act like that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We have been easing into school all week. I've never understood starting mid-week. It's kind of "all or nothing" for me. A weird thing, I know, but I can't get geared up for a short week! We have done math, copywork, handwriting, reading, English from the Roots Up, a couple of read alouds and a little history. Jordan has done tons of history and literature. I have to order a new math program for him. Next week our geography and history will be in full swing and we will add a composers study three days a week and hymn study daily.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Having such limited experience in this homeschool world, I appreciate hearing about this day. alot of friends will say, bloggers only tell the good... thanks for dispelling this myth.
    I have started slowly back to our school work, reading alot, phonics some and now starting some fun projects we've been looking forward to. HOpe your week looks up! Hang in there!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I hate to admit it, but I loved knowing we're not the only ones to have struggled getting back into the groove. Everything fell apart for us over the holiday, even our Bible time. We are blessed to have parents nearby, but that means we had kids missing off and on throughout the break, as well as another 10 yr old from out of town with us several days. It was great to FINALLY be back on Monday, but my son has had a hard time getting back to his math. His brain has cobwebs in it after 2 weeks of video game overload. We all cherish our read aloud time, but are struggling to finish math in less than 2 hrs. Hopefully tomorrow will be better!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think we're all adjusting to getting back at it!
    All our friends were out of school on Monday, too. Like Anita, there's just always been something with me about starting a week on Monday! Anyway, it's been an adjustment. We had surely settled into a nice lazy routing during the holidays!
    Best wishes on a great semester!
    Love to all!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. We have had days like this one and for me it is such a let down because by the time we start I am so ready and excited to start! I wish my son shared a little bit of the excitement to get school going again! :-) But I do agree with you, even on days like this one, I am so thankful to be homeschooling my son! And even thankful for the time with him (even when we have those rough days).
    Have a blessed week!
    Lyn @ Southern Homeschool Journey
    http://southernhomeschool.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete