A Gray Home Schooling Day

What do you do when you have a gray home schooling day? For me, these days usually start off just fine. On Sunday nights I make out my schedule for the week; I have a planner and write out a general idea of what we're doing every day. There's plenty of room for flexibility but I do have specific goals in mind for each week. I am only home schooling GG1 right now; GG2 is in preschool three mornings a week. However, when she is home with us in the mornings, I do a few subjects with her also, but those don't require any planning. I put all the books together on a shelf, organize any papers, extra materials, etc. I am, in a word, prepared.

But all the preparedness in the world doesn't help when gray home schooling days emerge. Sometimes the days are caused by tiredness; if the baby is up several times at night, then I am tired and run down and don't want to be constructive the next day. Or, as is so often the case, two or more of them are up in the night. If I calculated the exact amount of sleep I get on a regular basis I would probably run away from home. I try not to be realistic about how much sleep I actually get. Also, GG1 is finally reading chapter books; she has been staying up late to finish reading the past few nights, so she is sometimes tired the next day.

At any rate, if one or more of us is tired, the grayness sets in. It starts off innocently enough; I get out the Children's Bible and say, "Pick a story for Mommy to read, please." We always start off with Bible time. But then I hear things like, "I don't like that one," or "We read that one yesterday." Here it comes, just a bit of gray, perhaps I can head it off.

After Bible, we always do the dreaded handwriting; some days it's fine, but on gray days it's torture. GG1 stabs her pencil into her paper, twists her hair, hangs upside down off her chair, anything to avoid actually putting her pencil onto the paper and forming a word. Those of you with older children will perhaps laugh at my pain right now; I know it gets worse than handwriting but for us, handwriting pretty much sucks our will to live.

Math can be a saving subject or a killing one. If the stars are aligned and a crow flies at midnight, we'll zip through the worksheet or math game and move on to history. But if handwriting went poorly and the grayness has swept in like a mighty tide, choking the light out of our home school day, math goes badly. Very badly. And I don't like home school that goes badly--that's one of the reasons I love home school. I don't have to fight my child to learn. I am free to step away or close the books for the day and do something else. But on gray days, even the prospect of making it through the morning is daunting.

What is my solution for a gray day, you might ask? Well, for starters, I just have to get over myself, get over my goals, get over my wishes and most importantly, make sure that I continue to move forward and keep trying. Karen Andreola, a faithful practitioner of the Charlotte Mason method of home schooling, writes in her A Charlotte Mason Companion that "We may not reach our ideals, but it is our fervent, faithful reaching towards them that matters greatly" (51). In other words, I remind myself frequently that a gray home school day does not mean the end of my home school experience. In fact, we can have several bad days and it doesn't mean anything.  It doesn't mean that I am a bad mom, or a bad home schooler, or that my children need the structure of "real" school, or even that I am unqualified to teach them. It simply means that I need to pray more, think more, and most importantly, keep loving my children through the grayness.

To quote Karen Andreola again, I completely agree with her when she says, "Children's horizons of thought need to be wider than their workbooks" (25). So perhaps a gray day is nothing more than too narrow horizons. With that in mind, my first impulse is to turn on the TV and give myself a break, a mental time out, while the kids stare blindly at the screen. However, I almost always resist its siren call and never turn it on during the home school day, especially not on a day that we are struggling. TV for us is like poison; cranky kids, cranky mom, gray, gray, gray day. How do I broaden their horizons, especially on a day when they are not cooperative or I am tired, and not use the TV?

First we go outside. Even if it's raining. Or cold. Or whatever. We suit up if it's cold, boots on if it's raining, swimsuits on if it's hot. All of us troop out the door, baby included, and take a look-see. Nature and fresh air do wonders for my brain and thought processes, so out we go. We usually find something interesting to do.

Even if it's something unconventional. This pic was from last summer, but you get the idea. I'll drag a laundry hamper and a sheet outside and they'll make a plane and runway out of it. Or turn the kiddie pool upside down and they're turtles. Granted, I have young children, so I don't think these ideas apply to older kids, but just going outside improves my mood a ton. I think a dose of Ye Olde Blue Sky (or gray) is a grand panacea. I'll take books outside, a big bowl of pretzels (see previous post for outside snacking), and sippies of water. Sometimes they'll want to be read to, sometimes they won't. But at least we're accomplishing my goal of broadening their horizons, even if those horizons only go as far as the swing-set in the backyard. If the weather just does not permit us to be outside for long, we'll head back in, grateful to be warm and dry, and make a tent under the dining room table. Or we'll get out every pillow and blanket in the house and turn the living room into a rumpus room. And pray we don't need stitches.

And before I know it, things are looking better. We might not get a lick of work done that day, but at least it's not as gray any longer. In fact, it might be positively sunny, even if it's still raining.

Maybe we all do more growing on gray days.