That Week that was Rocky {week 1}

Boy howdy.  You sure do get rusty over the summer.  We started back to school this past week and, whoa.  WHOA.  We were very out of (school) shape.

Monday
Classical Conversations (CC) started this past Monday.  And it was a great day!  It was nice to see old familiar faces again.   Cade ended up staying home from CC because he wasn't feeling too well.  But Jack & Claire & I went and had a good time.  What really had me in knots was how Jack was going to feel about the Essentials class (the afternoon grammar & writing class that Cade & I did last year). It's a grueling yet exciting class, and I could see where Jack would be overwhelmed. 

But he LOVED it!

Tuesday
I decided to take Tuesday off to get a lot of things done around the house.  We got home from a last minute vacation to Red River, NM, late Sunday night, and a mountain of laundry waited as did grocery shopping and getting 57,342 bugs cleaned off the front of my car.  I was really glad we took Tuesday off.  It was a productive day, and I would have been overly stressed trying to get all that done AND doing school.

Wednesday
The rubber met the road on Wednesday.  We officially started homeschooling on this day.  And yikes.  Chaotic begins to describe how the day went.  Kids were crying, I felt like I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and I was seriously contemplating putting the kids back in public school.

Thursday
Thursday was a little better than Wednesday.  We still had kids crying, I still felt like my head was chopped off, and things were still chaotic.  I decided that we needed to have a schedule to help my manage my time (when I would be working one-on-one with kids throughout the day) and worked on that.  Thursday was a terrible day for me personally.  Terrible.

Friday
Friday was much, much better.  We loosely followed the schedule (I made sure that the kids knew how to read the schedule; there isn't much point to giving them a schedule if they don't know how to read and use it) and peace and order were restored.  Kind of.  At least there were no tears.  Well, there were some tears, but it wasn't nearly as dramatic as Wednesday & Thursday.  I was able to keep calm during the kid eye leaking process and thought to myself that maybe I didn't need to register the kids for public school.  So, success!

Thoughts
One kid, perhaps the oldest one (but I'm not naming any names), had trouble waking up on time this week.   This isn't a new phenomena.  And he started to mention that I could just wake him up when it was time to start school... and I laughed.  I told him that it isn't my job to wake him up anymore.  He has an alarm clock in his room.  He has a watch with an alarm built into it.  He has the tools to wake up on his own, and he needs to use them. 

You see, the kids lose game/TV privileges if they are not at their desks by 8:00 AM Tuesday through Friday.  A little harsh?  Maybe.  But I have found that if my family doesn't get started at a particular time, then it's easy to procrastinate starting school, and before you know it, it's 10AM and we haven't even finished breakfast.