School has pretty much been a joke through all of this, but we were able to get some stuff done here and there. Plus, I learned one disadvantage to the set up I have had for the past couple of years.
As I've mentioned several times, we use and love Tapestry of Grace for most of our subjects. I love the approach that they (and several other curricula) take in using with multiple age groups. It makes planning so much easier on me, allows the kids to learn from each other since they are covering the same topics, and helps dad (or the non-teaching parent) to keep up with what is happening in school.
The problem comes when one child gets sick. What then do you do? I could keep going and just have the sick child miss those days but then what happens when new lessons depend on the knowledge gained in the missed lessons. Plus, I could be back to planning separate lessons for each of my children. I could just give everyone the day off of school, but what if said sickness lasts for much longer than anticipated? Now, I'm having to scramble to get all of our allotted days in according to state law. Do I say forget the curriculum and do a separate unit study to pass the time with healthy kids? I could but then the library gets cranky because now all my school books are well past due.
So what did I do these last few weeks when we had pretty much every non-serious bug imaginable hit our house? A bit of a combination of all of the above.
I was blessed by the fact that the Winter Olympics were on when my kids all came down sick - instant unit study! Yay! We did really easy lapbooks (which I'll blog on when get all wrapped up with those), and the kids got the afternoons off to watch the competition. They loved the break from our usual routine and the fact that they got to watch lots of TV!
But then what about all those library books? Well, as I said, the lapbooks we did were super easy and had enough flexibility to be able to get caught up on when said sick child felt better. That allowed for all of the regularly schedule reading to take place on schedule. Sick kids can still hear read-alouds after all, and the healthy kids get out of the regular assignments since we're doing Olympics unit. Plus, I can return those library books on time, so the librarians stay happy with me! Win-win for everyone!
Now I just have to figure out how to convince the kids to happily return to their normal routine of full lessons and assignments. Hmmmm.....thoughts on this one?
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