Monday, March 23, 2015

What Being Sick has Taught Me

Lately I have been struggling with administering such a structured school day to Grace that it leaves very little time for anything else. Of course some of that does fall on her and making her school work a priority that doesn't stretch throughout the day. As I have mentioned before in my opinion homeschooling high school just isn't fun and some days is pure drudgery. I want her to be passionate about something. Sometimes that passion revolves around art but over the past six months not as much as it once was. I have also talked with a close friend that unschools and have tried to get a beat on what that actually looks like on a day to day basis. I have tried something similar to unschooling in the past but it just didn't work for us. Most days Grace isn't very motivated to do anything, but today things were a little different. You see, yesterday afternoon I came down with the nasty virus that is going around our community. Grace had it a couple of weeks ago. Mondays are usually hard school days trying to get as many subjects finished as possible, but today would be a little different. Grace is not only getting some of her schoolwork done but she is having to be me. That means taking care of laundry, washing dishes, taking all the dogs in and out to the bathroom, watching over the puppies, and so on. I didn't have to ask her to take care of these chores for me she just stepped up and did them. So all this rambling is really my way of saying even if she didn't get to a lot of her schoolwork today - the day was not a bust. She stepped up to the plate and did what needed to be done to keep the house running smoothly while I was up in bed trying to get better. Life Skills 101. It is okay to step back and just live life because they are learning something every day. Just because they didn't open a book doesn't mean it wasn't a good day of education and life building.

3 comments:

A Candle to Read By said...

Well done, Grace! Initiative and thoughtfulness are worth their weight in gold.

Unknown said...

Amen Sista! Hope you feel better soon! Nothing worse than a sick mama!

LJS said...

Have you read Blake Bowles' book Better Than College? I crossed out the title and rewrote High School. It is an easy read and may help you reframe your idea of high school. We are not really unschoolers, although we do most of our learning according to our interested. It helped me realize that high school is a 4 year opportunity to do things that many children, who are confined to a traditional schooling model cannot. My motto is make the most of these 4 years and look back and say, Wow, I did that! I think it we do this, college will follow. Perhaps not a traditional 4 year university (to begin with) but certainly community college followed by a university.