Spying on the O’s

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This week, the blog hop going on at Heart of the Matter has the focus on what a day in your homeschool looks like.

I’d love to write a post something like this:

Upon rising in the morning, the boys cheerfully make their beds, do all necessary personal hygiene, and then come upstairs to eat a nutritious breakfast.

By 8:30 a.m., we are beginning our prayers that mark the start of the school day. 

We then do some of our group work (e.g. history or science) before each boy starts working dillegently on their checklist. 

We take a break at 10 a.m. for a quick snack and time outside if the weather is good.  Then it is back to work until lunchtime.  This late morning time is J’s nap time and provides us with more quiet for the challenging subjects.

While the older boys quietly do independent work, I am helping D make progress through his.

After lunch, we either do more group work, quietly finish independent work, or rejoice that ALL is done and we can have free time.  A quick pick up before dad comes home and then it’s time to make a yummy dinner.

Yeah….that’s the kind of post I’d like to write. 

But, it would be a big ole’ lie!

Instead, we suffer from lack of schedule most days.  Workboxes last fall helped us look a little more like my ‘dream’ homeschool day.  Emphasis on help as some things did not go away.  The boys still vied for my attention when it was directed at one particular child.  Or, the two boys NOT working with mom would be misbehaving.

Our school time does usually start between 8:30 and 9 a.m.  We do sit together and begin with prayer. But, I can’t promise that if you peeked through the window you’d see all the boys neatly dressed or even the rooms picked up.

We do often begin with a group subject like history so we do not have to coordinate everyone’s independent work to finish at a set time.  What we will do on occasion is have some group work immediately after lunch. 

Someone spying on us when the boys begin individual work would see mom fighting to keep the chaos at bay.  Cries of “He’s making too much noise!”, “My brain hurts too much to do math!”, or “I can’t find a pencil!” are common, everyday things.  The too much noise thing is subjective, though.  P thinks his brothers just breathing in the same room creates too much distraction while he’s quick to put on music that drives THEM to distraction. 

As for J taking naps to allow us work without keeping eyes on him…..well, that’s never been a regular occurrence.  He is being put down for rest, but if he decides there is fun being missed he just starts to wail from his room upstairs.  There are days, though, when he’ll nap and the boys will cooperate.  On those days, I LOVE to homeschool and will even fix a nice dinner or declare it a movie afternoon.

Unfortunately, the boys are still trying to perfect their avoidance tactics and those days of family fun are few and far between.  And I start dreaming of ways to get more organization into our days so the boys can learn how to be productive in a reasonable amount of time.