How we handled a bad homeschool week.

Readers will remember that last week my son Sam was dealing with a terrible MRSA infection on his face. My son Gabriel was also scheduled to serve morning mass every day last week at 8:00 a.m. Dealing with those two things really threw my homeschool schedule off and by Tuesday I knew that we were not going to be able to do business as usual.

So instead of making the kids try to work around the chaos, the late starts and their brother who was obviously in a lot of pain, I decided to put aside all of the book work. All of it. We did not do reading, math, phonics, writing or grammar last week.

And instead we focused on the fun subjects that I always put off until last and sometimes never even get to! We got a huge chunk or our science curriculum out of the way and even did the fun experiment with the light and styrafoam ball to illustrate the different phases of the moon! Ordinarily we might have skipped that part, but the kids loved it and I think they really have an understanding of the lunar cycle.

(The moon on a stick!)

(In our experiment Noah’s head was the earth, casting its shadow on the “melancholy orb.”)

(The “sun” is a lamp I received 28 years ago for a wedding present by my co-workers. My kids were impressed that it was “so old.”)

We also concentrated on our geography! We are studying the New England states right now and we had a good time reviewing Maine and New Hampshire with a new look at Vermont and Massachusettes. WE even planned some foods we are going to be eating from these states including lobster and maple syrup! (Personally I am looking forward to the lobster although it will be frozen or canned – I can’t do the fresh thing!)

But my most enjoyable part of last week was continuing to read in our Martha Series. We are almost done with Down by the Bonnie Glenn and have really enjoyed Martha’s adventures with her new nanny and visits to the local wise woman, Auld Mary. We also spent considerable time learning about each of the saints the kids were portraying for All Saints Day!

So while it wasn’t what I planned, the total week was not a waste and in fact was quite memorable and fun. Maybe I should plan this un-breaks more often!!

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