(Pictures taken and stylishly overexposed by the teen.)
It's been a busy couple of weeks. School is going swimmingly. Well... we're treading water. The children are doing well, moving along in their work, textbooks and projects. I'm the only one balking apparently.
I hate textbooks. Okay, personally I love textbooks. All the work lined up in rows, indexes, step by steps. That's how my linear learning brain works. But my kids' eyes glaze over when we pull them out and my little one says I don't make school 'fun' anymore. I don't know how to get past the 'need' for textbooks and go more into an unschooling learning environment. At least for the little one. The teen might revolt if I took her out of her safe little textbook world. She, like me, craves order and the textbooks make her feel like she's learning something (even though they bore her) as opposed to 'willy-nilly' learning as she calls unschooling, which would make her feel scattered.
I'm not sure if an unschooled school style is for us though. I think we need more of a semi-unschooling going on. Somehow I'd sneak in math and such. Otherwise, my little one would spend her days playing with legos & playmobil, sewing, digging in the dirt and catching bees.
** banging head against the table. **
I am really feeling that feeling of ruining my kids lives 'forever'. I want homeschool to equal fun or at least a good learning environment to them. I don't want them to someday say with rolled eyes and clinched teeth, 'my mom homeschooled us.' I would feel like I had wasted their precious formative years in an endless stream of boredom. Don't know what to do though.
I need to find a good balance. I need to make time for the balancing. Suggestions welcomed.
Today is a typical Monday for us. I don't know what we do on weekends that flattens us out like pancakes under a semi, but on Mondays we're toast. Sundays we usually head to church for 2 hours and then a leisurely afternoon at the grandparents house, eating, reading, sometimes swimming. After that we have every intention of coming home, straightening the house so its ready for Monday's school start but instead we usually laze around in our respective areas reading, watching Food Network, cartoons or on the internet. It's down time for us. So I don't see why we're always so worn out on Mondays.