Planning

I loved school when I was a kid. Nothing excited me more than that back-to-school shopping list and filling my new back pack with all the perfect supplies in all their brand new perfection. I loved perfect college-ruled notebook paper with it's perfect red and blue lines and spiral bound notebooks without a single thing written in them yet. Perfection.

Sigh, then I had to write my name on it. I have awful handwriting. Every one of my teachers cheerfully told me I would make a fantastic Dr one day because of my illegible handwriting. I tried, the Lord knows I tried, but alas, I inherited my father's handwriting instead of my mother's.

So, I don't know if it's the time of year that draws up in me a desire to plan and organize and categorize or if it's the fact that I had an energy burst today or both, but I began to have one of those days where I suddenly felt the need to micro manage the home.

I once bought a book that encouraged planning every 15 minutes of every family member's day for the entire day on a massive wall chart with sticky notes.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

ahem.

But the reality is, micro managing has two major downfalls.

1. It takes away the opportunity for initiative.

Example: A few days ago I was standing in the kitchen and my four year old wandered out into our huge half acre backyard. At first he just wandered around and then I saw him go back into the garage and emerge with the dog poo rake and scooper. I watched him spend about 30 minutes scanning the entire backyard and cleaning up every last pile of dog poop, which was considerable since it had been two days since we had cleaned up. You better believe I went out there when he was done and praised him for his initiative along with rewarding him. And I had to wonder...if that job had been assigned to someone for the day and if he had a list of jobs already assigned to him, would he have done that? Now I am certainly not against giving kids chores, but this gave me a whole new idea of how to manage chores in the home that I'll share later.

2. It forgets that the real moments of life are the interruptions. C.S. Lewis said it best:


“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.”


― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis

So, my goals now are to focus on the real things and simply use organization as a tool to help only in the areas that really need help. AKA: IF IT'S NOT BROKE, DON'T FIX IT. 

It's so tempting to want to control and perfect, but it's never going to be perfect and, really, I think it's such  a joy stealer to see life's work as something that needs perfecting and controlling instead of viewing it as something that can constantly remind us of Christ. Example:

Laundry. (I can hear the collective groan right now throughout cyber space.) IT. NEVER. ENDS. EVER. This reminds me that all of creation tends towards the fall. But the redundancy of our work humbles us. In the drudgery, in the relentlessness, in the dirt, we may sigh, but we don't sigh as those that do not have a release. I need to put a crucifix over my washer and dryer so I can see in the drudgery my glorious release. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. 

So, as I sat at the table today so tempted to begin the micro managing that makes me feel more perfect and makes me feel like maybe, maybe this time I will be able to control this mess that is our sinful world and life, I looked at the crucifix over our kitchen table and lectured myself, "only fix what really needs fixing"..and even that is such meager attempts. And yet, I feel pretty proud of the managing that has worked out!

So the planning I did accomplish was for our school year. My 2 year old will begin learning his letters and numbers and already knows his colors. My 4 year old will begin "4K" at home and we are using Rod and Staff's ABCDEFG books. I'm also using "Beginning Reading at Home" which is an old, out-of-print set of 10 kits that introduces letters and words in a multi-sensory way. My 6 year old will be using the "Beginning Reading at Home" as well as our CLE readers and for math will be using Singapore math. And my 8 year old will be using Singapore math, finishing his CLE readers, Story of the World, Apologia Science, and Spelling Power. We are not doing any further work in Language Arts this year because next year we will be using Classical Writing's upper level books...the primers just seem too much a waste of time. I really want him to focus on lots and lots of free time reading to get him reading proficiently enough to tackle Classical Writing and Latin next fall. 

The way I play to get through all of this each day is as follows:

Every day we will do: 

Morning: Catechism/Bible/Hymn study with all, 15-20 min per child of math instruction.

Afternoon: 15 min per child of reading instruction

In addition:

Monday: Writing for 8 year old (whatever I assign, no curriculum). 

Tuesday: History for 8 yr old: Story of the World

Wednesday: Science for 8 yr old: Apologia

Thursday: Piano. He practices every day but Thursday he will practice double the time. 

Friday: Dad's day off. 

And that's it. We keep it as minimal as possible so that the rest of the day learning can flow from all the interesting things we do, see, and talk about. And, if at breakfast someone asks a question that flows into a rabbit trail of learning as often happens with curious little boys, well, so be it. 

My comfort, when we don't stick to curriculum, comes in a handy print-out for each child's grade from wordbook.com that gives a list subject by subject of each thing they should know by the end of the year. Whenever I begin to worry whether my kids are actually learning I begin to go down the list for each child and see how ahead they actually are. This also allows me to watch for gaps or areas I wouldn't think to cover. 

I've also been doing some further planning in the area of chores and housework and meals/cooking but I'll save that for another day. :)