As a software engineer I travel rarely for work. In the first few years of our marriage we traveled little, Janine didn't enjoy it. But then we started venturing out more. We've been doing a major trip every year for about ten years often lasting a couple weeks to a month, with frequent minor trips.
We hate to fly into the Denver Airport. It is bumpy. A couple times fellow passengers have thrown up. The air currents are very rough as the plains coming in from the East meet the Rocky mountains.
Janine says our reentry into homeschooling this week has also been rough. This is largely because we've been having some construction done on our house. We have a room over our garage. It is a large room of about 300 square feet. When we first got married we used it as storage. We'd dump stuff up there that we sort of thought we'd want, but didn't have another place to put.
As children came along we realized we wanted the space for them to play. It took over a month to clean it out. I spent a full Saturday organizing, selecting stuff to save, throw out, and donate to charity. The girls loved having the extra space.
Our foster care boy is closing in on his second birthday. The rules are he needs his own room. We decided to turn our study downstairs back into a bedroom and split the room upstairs into two thirds playroom and one third study. The construction is almost done, and we've been trying to organize and purge our stuff. My parents watched the children Friday so Janine and I could take off for a twenty four hour get away. We decided to come back a bit early so we focus on cleaning out the study. We spent hours Saturday and more hours today. The study is about half cleaned out.
One of the neat things about homeschooling is the flexibility. When we need to take it easy for awhile we can. There is no schedule set by a school saying we have to march to their drum. I remember the story about a boy who fell apart one day in school. The principal came down hard on the boy and sentenced him to detention. That afternoon when his mother came to pick him up the principal complained and complained. The mother said "Well you know his grandfather died over the weekend. I wanted to keep him home, but the school secretary said we'd get in trouble."
Homeschool lets us relax when we have other distraction. Our daughters are not stressed out with all the construction. Janine is a bit stressed, but our daughters don't mind.
As Janine posted last week, we are getting back into the grove of homeschooling. It has been a bit bumpy, but we know that things will be fine.
I love homeschooling.
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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children
4 comments:
I agree that the flexibility is a tremendous blessing. My dad passed away unexpectedly in February, and I was so grateful we had the ability to stay with my mom for a couple weeks, as well as to continue traveling back and forth a week at a time to spend time with her and help out. School just traveled with us. I also appreciate that our children are experiencing first hand how we support one another in times of need.
Hang in there with the renovations - they'll be done before you know it!
There is a lot of talk about work/life balance for adults. Educating children at home enables children to have a better school/life balance. Flexibility is the key.
I'm a regular reader of your posts; and am thinking of homeschooling next fall with our 3yo and 9yo (who is currently in public school)... you're inspiring me. Thanks for the open door to your life!
sleep-deprived - I am sorry to hear about the loss of your father.
patricia - I often think the really important lessons we teach our children are the one which are not academic. Yet so many people focus on the academic part of education.
sarah - thank you for the kind words. If you have any questions, please ask. And good luck.
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