Ch-Ch-Change

It's week 3 here at the Tatum Independent School District. Things are chugging along better than expected, but not without a few bumps. We're already discovering ways to improve, different approaches, and how to make our homeschool "gel".

Our big change this week is a new schedule. We're experimenting a bit. The first two weeks we studied 5 subjects every day. We're supposed to spend an average of 45 minutes per subject. Those of you who are at all familiar with 7 year old boys and/or 4 year old boys can imagine why this didn't go exactly as I had planned.

45 minutes is a long time when you're little. And when you're a boy too? Forget it. We've found that 30 minutes is about all we can take. Riley, of course, is a completely different story - she loves to read and write and could sit and do it all day, no prob. But Kole and Nate have to get the wiggles out one way or another. Otherwise, we all end up feeling like we've just endured 4 hours of Chinese water torture. It's kinda hard to be nice to each other after that.

What was I going on about? Oh yeah. The schedule. This week, I'm trying something new. Every day, we start with our Bible reading, pledges, prayer and sing a song (or 3, like today). Then we move on to our subjects. The first one is Bible. It's also the only one we're continuing to do every day. After Bible, on Mon., Wed., and Fri. we're digging in to Language Arts and History & Geography. On Tues. and Thurs. we're focusing on Math and Science. Next week, we'll flip-flop it and do the M-W-F stuff on T-Th and vice versa.

So, that's our big change this week. Who knows what future weeks will bring. Maybe we'll do all our work while standing on our heads, or only speak in sign language, or convert everything we study into a quadratic equation. Or not. Eventually I hope we find what works and get this puppy running like a well-oiled machine. Until then, I guess we'll just keep squeaking along.

We have some exciting things coming up in the near future. We're going to the Apple Butter Festival this Saturday at a nearby orchard. Next Monday is School Day at the South Plains Fair (all kids get in free - woo hoo!) October 11 is the Pumpkin Festival in Floydada. Oh, and October 7 is the Taste of Home Cooking School - I am completely pumped about that! Of course, that's really just for Mommy....

Happy Wednesday all :)