Make-Up Days Already?!

Yes, folks, we're already playing catch up. We're weeks behind on art lessons, about a week behind on history and science, and who knows how far behind in Latin! And you know what? It doesn't even matter. It's only annoying because we're not evenly behind, so I'm jumping between lesson plans doing what I'd planned for this week in Spelling but last week's History. 

I know a lot of people get bent out of shape if they can't check everything off their to-do list each day and they "fall behind". But behind what? What kids in public schools are doing? Who cares what kids in public schools are doing! Most of them don't even get to learn half the awesome stuff we do and they never finish their textbooks at the end of the year anyway! Behind our own expectations then? Well maybe that's a sign we need to adjust our expectations. It's easy as homeschoolers to try to do too much. And isn't one of the wonderful things about homeschooling the flexibility? We make our own schedule. We piece together our own course of study. We decide which days we school and which days we laze around like unproductive pajama people (which we've been doing quite a lot lately).  So let's be flexible. Let's cut ourselves some slack. We'll get around to everything, it may just be a little slower than we'd planned. And lately I've apparently really needed a break because we've only been doing half days.

So today, to at least get my lessons closer to being all on the same page of the planner, we had a make-up day. We worked on reading a writing, but instead of all our various other subjects we spent the rest of the day working primarily on science and history, which are typically our favorite subjects around here anyway! 

We decorated our salt dough volcano. (Side note: it's really hard to get three wiggly, excited kids all in the frame and facing the camera at the same time!)

We erupted our volcano! That Lego house never stood a chance. Then we watched a YouTube video of lava oozing out of a volcano in Hawaii.

We reviewed our prayers and poems we've been trying to memorize but have been neglecting.

We read about mountains, rivers, and glaciers, did some journaling, and placed a block of ice on a wire shelf in the freezer with a brick on top to see how ice flows. (Hint: it supposedly will seep down between the bars of the wire rack. We'll see tomorrow!)

We read about the Ajanta caves in India and the Buddhist monks who carved out their monasteries and filled them with beautiful frescoes and carvings. We looked at photos of them online. Then we colored pictures for us to touch every day this week to see the effect of many people touching a piece of art over and over and how it can damage the artwork.

Then we planted broccoli in the garden and observed the ants digging out their tunnels after the rain and carrying hundreds of bits of fallen leaf to their hill's opening to carry inside later. Those ants can really carry some huge (well, for an ant!) clumps of dirt!

Then we found some mushrooms, took a walk around the back yard looking for more, talked about how they have gills underneath that make spores, and about where they live. We even found a whole huge colony of small mushrooms and Felix picked a "family" of them, big daddy mushrooms, smaller mommy mushrooms, and tiny baby mushrooms. Then of course we washed our hands very well because I am no backyard forager and don't know if our mushrooms are edible or deadly! 

It was probably the most pleasant, fun, and productive school day we've had in a long time. We're still a little "behind" what I had planned, especially in art. Does that bother me? Not at all. I'm not going to stress about it. We'll adjust and get to it eventually. And sometimes a "make-up day" can be just the energizing, motivating kick in the pants we needed!