…lhude synge the hamesculing mum, "Get thee outside! Now! Don’t be icumen back in until you’ve played out there for a while!"
Ahem. Sorry. I’m not exactly Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog.
Today is the first day of our "summer break." The scare quotes are there because (a) it’s barely spring, and (b) we only sort of take a break in the summer. Oscar (finishing second grade) will drop all the "subjects" and continue with spelling and math, each only twice a week. He also will work through a "50 States" workbook in preparation for American History beginning in the fall. Milo (pre-k) will finish up the Saxon Math K, which is tied to the calendar, in June, and after that he will only work on phonics. I elected not to teach any new Latin over the summer, but we’ll drill on it once a week so we don’t forget what we’ve learned.
I rearranged my days for the summer, too, to keep the kids outside when the sun’s low and inside when it’s high:
Morning is for outings: clean up breakfast; pack a snack; be gone a couple of hours and come home for lunch. I’m envisioning a lot of trips to the local playgrounds and parks.
Early afternoon is "inside time," for stories, chores, light schoolwork, and indoor play.
We have tea/snack sometime between 3 and 4.
After tea is "back yard time." They have to go outside and not come in until Mark gets home.
So far so good. We had a bit of a wrench thrown into our schedule because the kids were all exposed to chicken pox a couple of weeks ago. No spots yet, but the potential contagiousness has already kept us out of music class and postponed one long-planned playdate.
But today? Great.
My biggest problem right now is that I’m overusing videos during the day, especially for Milo (who’s 4). I have a hard time keeping him out of trouble while I’m concentrating on teaching his older brother, at the same time that I’ve also got Mary Jane to manage. As a result, Milo’s getting at least an hour a day of screen time. That is more than I really want him to have. I allay my feelings of rottenness a bit by showing him a lot of edu- and quasi-edu-videos (Signing Time, nature shows, The Electric Company), but I’d really like to cut everybody back to one video a couple times a week. With exceptions for rainy days or illness or… a chance to sit and talk to my husband for a little while without being interrupted, maybe.
Sigh. Maybe I could just start by saying "No movies on Mondays." And then I could expand it to Tuesdays. And so on. I wonder if I would learn how to cope. It’s more about disciplining myself than disciplining them. As is most of parenting, I have noticed.
bearing blog 