Today, I got the academic year planner for 2008-9 and began the task of filling in the weeks on which we are going to homeschool, however loosely, as opposed to the weeks that are holiday.\u00a0 I have to do this because all the possible holiday time is taken with up with trips abroad or visits from family.\u00a0 It’s a struggle to fit in 36 weeks of school time, but I make the effort.\u00a0 If I did not mark those weeks out, they would disappear into more trips and visits.\u00a0 And I’ve just remembered an extra thing I didn’t count, so I’m already a week down.\u00a0 Now, I’m not knocking the educational and social value of trips and visits, but:<\/p>\n
a) They are usually exhausting and over-stimulating, such that all attempts at reading, writing, maths, rational thought and maturity go out of the window during them.\u00a0 Whereas those things are important.\u00a0 All the little schedules we set up to make our life work better get blown away too.\u00a0 There is pretty much always a longish take-off ramp for getting back in gear.<\/p>\n
b) During trips and visits, every available minute of the child’s time is pretty much planned out by the adults around her.\u00a0 Whereas when we are ‘doing school’ she gets large amounts of the day and week to do exactly what she wants: play, carry out a project, read a book, or ask to visit somewhere or someone locally (she knows what’s available, so she can make a choice).\u00a0 This, I think, is even more important.<\/p>\n
I would love to have more flexibility, but the year isn’t long enough.\u00a0 Mike has a solution: we “do school” during trips and visits.\u00a0 Then we can squeeze in more of them.\u00a0 He doesn’t understand that point a) means I have noticed that this is a failure already.\u00a0 He thinks we can somehow make it work if we just try harder.\u00a0 Maybe it will work better if he is on board as well.\u00a0 I don’t think he really appreciates the value of point b) at all.\u00a0 I would be more motivated to try to do school during trips and visits if I knew for certain that it was going to pay off with a couple of quiet weeks at home just pottering around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, I got the academic year planner for 2008-9 and began the task of filling in the weeks on which we are going to homeschool, however loosely, as opposed to the weeks that are holiday.\u00a0 I have to do this because all the possible holiday time is taken with up with trips abroad or visits … Continue reading Scheduling<\/span>