Home School Habitat

It's September. For the past few weeks my computer screen has been flooded with pictures of adorable children all spiffed and standing in front of their homes, waiting for the first day of school to begin. Such an exciting time. A very visual step forward on the growing up staircase.

It's an exciting time for my children, too. I don't send them off with the carpool or a big yellow bus each morning, but things do change around here on the first day of school. Mostly I just try harder to have a routine.

I purposefully don't start a school schedule until after Labor Day. There are too many summer learning adventures to finish up and I'm not ready for textbooks yet. Labor Day came and went way too early this year. Time to adjust!

Our first day of school pics, if I had them, would not be of the Little People on the front porch. They wouldn't be spiffed either. We start school at 6:30 a.m. All of the students are piled onto one of the three couches, usually still in PJ's, and usually bundled together in blankets. We have a family devotional for two hours. This is my time to work with them as a group. We read scriptures, sing songs, eat breakfast, memorize poetry, pledge allegiance, and then write. Anything that can be learned as a group is thrown into this time slot.

By 8:30 my preschoolers and kindergartner are finished and the rest get ready for the day and then work on their own. We come together again for two hours in the afternoon for more difficult subjects while toddlers and babies sleep and then one more time after dinner for my double digits crew. (Ten and ups.)

Monday and Tuesday were our first days back. I didn't even cry at the end of those days. Wish I could say the same for the rest of the week.

Exactly

The fabric that I had ordered for ballroom costumes (that are due already) finally started arriving Tuesday night. I also had a call from a dear neighbor who scopes out free fruit for our family every year. (All families should be blessed with such friends!) The pears are ripe. Come pick them this week. Oh, and the dentist called. The appointments that can't be rescheduled....are tomorrow. Oh, and the corn is getting old and should be frozen yesterday and the 45 tomato plants are all going to ripen at the same moment.... and they pick this week to do it. And did I mention plums. Pottawatomies, reds, sugar, and even the wild plums all decide that the first week of September they should all need to be picked and turned into syrup..... or else.

So Wednesday was a bit off for school. (Slight sarcasm. Not much, but a little.)

So those of you that were impressed with how I imagine our school days should be (see above) lets be honest about how it really is.

We had a substitute teacher on Wednesday. And Thursday. That's what I say when I can't teach and I have to remember that sometimes that happens at the public schools, too.

In this case it wasn't so bad. I still had Miss Nickie with me this week. She is a vocal performance music major and she just came home from a Spanish speaking mission. After scripture study she took over for me. Oh Suzanna is a little bit different for the Little People when she teaches. That was fun to listen to as my sewing machine hummed away. And my pathetic attempt to teach the Greek alphabet has nothing on her ability to teach them Spanish. !La leche chocolate por favor!

I didn't get a teaching day completely off, though. Wednesday afternoon my boys came into the dress pit, also known as my sewing room, and declared that the window wells were filling up with frogs again. I took the opportunity for a science lesson and explained to them the meaning of the word habitat. I suggested that they look for a similar habitat (the creek bottoms came to my mind) and remove the frogs to a new home.

I now have jars of frogs in mud and water on my entryway table. Oh goodie.

It gets better.

On Thursday afternoon they all came back to the dress pit. The appointed spokesperson stood proudly before me.

"Mom, what kind of habitat does a mole need?"