Thanks for the encouragement, ladies. I am glad to hear I am not alone here!
TriciaMR wrote:
I'm a box checker, but since I need our light days to be on Wednesday, I have Monday in the TM be real life Thursday, Tuesday in the TM be real life Friday, etc. So, it is okay to not have those days line up. Really. And {hugs} on that as you work to overcome.
One thing I have done that has helped is move important stuff (like spelling) that gets skipped to first thing in the day. I know, I'm a pagan for not doing Bible-time first, but it has really helped our days to do our spelling rotation first, and then Bible.
The other thing that has helped, is I do Monday and Tuesday's geography on Monday. Then I do Monday and Tuesday's science on Tuesday. Then Wednesday and Thursday's geography on Wednesday, and Wednesday and Thursday's science on Thursday. This way I don't feel rushed to get to the "other" subject and we can spend the time we need on the subject at hand.
These are all great ideas. I think I could do something similar here. I think I need to move the 3 R's to the beginning of the day, then do science/geography later. Especially since the 3 R's are my dc's least favorite things to do. That might help. Also, if I write in the days at the top with a similar schedule as you, that could help my brain relax a bit also. My light day happens to need to be a Wednesday also (with an occasional Friday).
TriciaMR wrote: Another thing I have done (shhh, don't tell

) is have days where we dump the 3R's and just get caught up on ECC stuff. Then the next day, we just pick up on the next lesson in the 3Rs. We also often save crafts and cooking projects for Saturdays (which was hard during baseball season, but right now, Saturdays are more open for us), which frees us up not to worry about it.
Crafts/cooking on weekend may or may not work here just because the weekend always seems to get jammed packed with errands, shopping, cleaning, etc. But, what might work is doing those things on my light day instead. And, I, too, have dumped the 3 R's from time to time to catch up. I hate to admit it, but like I said, sometimes I skip things whether I want to or not.
kw4blessings wrote: We find ourselves "behind" almost every week because it seems like if we leave the house for any reason during the day (ie grocery shopping, art class, etc.) we don't get everything done.
My oldest also has some issues (undiagnosed, so I can't name them....sometimes I wish we had a name!!) that make school work difficult. One day we're doing great and flying through work, the next she's in tears. Sigh..
This is exactly what happens here! If we leave for any reason, it is so hard to get everything done or sometimes even a little done. It doesn't help we live a decent drive from anything that would require us to leave the house, so if we have to leave it is generally for a good chunk of the day.We have some diagnosed issues and some undiagnosed that we are in the process of trying to obtain. The process is taking time out of the house. And, the "issues" or diagnoses definitely make school work difficult and can take an emotional toll on mom. I just know that home is where they need to be and I need to lean on the Lord for help on this journey. But, if I could keep us on schedule and check off my boxes like my brain wants me to do, then that would help this mama out
kw4blessings wrote:We often leave music and art out when things are crazy and we need to catch up a bit. I try to have a priority list, mental usually: 1.Bible, 2. Math, 3.History, whatever.
It just occurred to me in responding to this is...why am I stressing that we skip music when one of the reasons we lose time during the week is to go to music class?...I think that chorus and violin can count, right? &) Duh! And, art, yes we skip that a lot and I do feel guilty about it because my kids love art. Maybe I will do what you and Tricia both mentioned and try doing some on the weekend.
kw4blessings wrote:Also, even though it's hard, I'm learning to be a little less "by the book" and relax a little. If we get to the end of the day and everyone can smile and feel like we've accomplished a decent amount, I consider it a win (even if we didn't finish). We may make up the missed stuff, might not. But, the days I try to "ram it all through", the kids are upset, I'm upset, and even though we got it all done, we didn't necessarily learn much
Thanks for this reminder. You are right. Ramming it through with upset kids and mom is not really effective learning. I don't want to take the joy out of their learning. Allowing them to find joy in learning again was one of the reasons we decided to h.s.