Our Strange Schedule

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. ~ Benjamin Franklin

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When I first started homeschooling I envisioned a perfect and smoothly run day. We would wake early, have breakfast, clean the kitchen, begin schoolwork by 8am and be finished by 11. Well months later, I have finally resigned myself to the fact that this will not work for our family. What stands in the way of being able to accomplish this? I bit of everything I guess.

My military hubby has a schedule that constantly changes. Different days each week. Six weeks of days then six weeks of nights with an occasional deployment thrown in. Of course, one of the fortunes of homeschooling is that we can spend the time that he does have off with him. So if he works the weekend then we can spend weekdays with him. If he works days then we are there in the evening. Nights? We are there in the day. Even if he is sleeping...

My daughter is a night owl. She definitely inherited this from both Mom and Dad. The only reason that we rise early now is because of that wonderful military discipline. (Although mine is finally beginning to wear off. I do love sleeping a bit late.) Even though we have always had a bedtime of 7:30 for the kids, she has a hard time falling asleep before 10 at night. Of course, then I can't wake her up before 8:30 in the morning without tempting her with some delicious yummy breakfast breads.

The little one has stopped having his regularly scheduled naps. When we first began I tried to have school time while occupying the toddler, but I quickly found out that it was much too frustrating for me to have to stop every 30 seconds to redirect the toddler misadventures. Alas, neither of my kiddos continued to nap regularly after 2 1/2 so the idea of trying to get work done during those precious few minutes was also out of reach. Oh, he still needs the nap (desperately!), but would rather reach the point of a crying, whining, heap in the afternoon rather than relax quietly in his soft, comfy bed for a few minutes to recharge.

Then there is me. I have realized that I will probably never have enough energy to keep the perfect house, but it drives me nuts to have a mess about while trying to do anything else. I feel so much more at peace if I can start out with completing the chores and then move on to other things. I mean, I just can't really relax until the house is at least moderately clean. The heap of laundry will make me shudder and a dirty kitchen makes me cringe.

So, how then do we fit our school-day into our topsy-turvy schedule? Throughout the day we take reading breaks. If the kids ask a question about anything that I might actually know the answer to we take time to explain it. Different types of clouds, why can birds fly, why is the moon out during the day? So what about the more structured learning? We do that at night of course! Since the little toddler-man forgoes his nap he absolutely crashes at 7pm. That's when we fit in schoolwork with princess nightowl. She loves having the time all to herself and feels special since I "let" her stay up late.