Back to the schedule!

We started back to school yesterday. While a lot of school districts are waiting until today or even Wednesday to return, I decided that after having a full month off, it would hurt none of us to start on a bank holiday.

I am happy to get back to a routine. Like a lot of things that have been unused for a month, it fits oddly at the moment, but I'm sure we'll settle in quickly this week.  Of course, some of the wrinkles come from external sources as well, such as my printer/copier. It chooses yesterday to break... right when I was about to copy a few vital worksheets for the math lesson. Normally, we don't mind working right in the book for some things, but this particular one needed about 5 copies of the same page, thus, the copier is actually *needed*  It thinks it has a paper jam, it doesn't. However, there is definitely something physically wrong, I'd describe it here, but I need my hands. I had a hard enough time telling my husband what was wrong last night. Ah, well. It's failing to pick up paper and blaming it on a jam, that's all I need to know. So of course, I decided today to skip that lesson and move on to the next. But due to missing supplies (blast, I know there in here somewhere!!) I can't do that one either. Oddly enough, I'd be able to make my own supplies if only my printer/copier were functional. I'd continue to move on to the next lesson, but I strongly suspect that today's is one of those foundation lessons that the rest of the next two weeks is really built on. Sigh.

And of course, we're back to not wanting to get out of bed. I can't blame my daughter, I had a very hard time getting up this morning as well. I had no idea it was after 8 until my husband woke me up by grabbing my foot. He'd been up and showered for quite some time. I swear I had just blinked at 6:30 when rolling over.

One of the things I'm really struggling with is my own approach to time. I enjoy that homeschooling doesn't "have" to happen between 8 and 2. Shannon and I are both clearly not morning people. Yet we do have time constraints, dance schedules, errands, time to cook dinner, clean house, and all the other functions of life. The current curriculum we're on is very interactive for most of the lessons, it's things we do or research together. I'm still showing her how to do a lot of things on her new computer that she got for Christmas, and more importantly, how *not* to do some of them. :) So I can't simply tell her "do this" and let her alone for the next hour, much as I'd like to. And of course, each day doesn't take the same amount of time. I'd like to start into a schedule, "School starts at X time" ... but it's so hard. I'm still trying to keep this fun, or if not fun, at least argument-free. I can't go about handing out demerits for being late to class, especially when it's as often my fault as hers for failing to start "on time." So it's an internal struggle. I think it'll help if I sit down with her and ask her opinion, she does indeed obey rules better if she has a hand in crafting them.