Learning Without School

I'm avoiding the computer lately. Seems that every time I sit down there is another thirty things I have to add to my to-do list. My email box is stuffed to the gills, my paper in-box is overflowing, and my school stuff is heaped in a pile on the corner of my desk. Not to mention Mt. Laundry or the planning that needs to happen so that tomorrow won't be a dismal failure.

But then it hits me - like the spit up that hit me earlier today - unexpectedly... I AM GETTING THINGS DONE. Granted, maybe not everything (nowhere near everything), and maybe not even what I had planned to do... but we are accomplishing things. They are small milestones but they need celebrating.

For example... Here's a few things we DID accomplish today (even though they weren't on the assignment chart):

* The house smells like fall sweetness after we baked TWO Sweet-Potato-Pecan Coffee Cakes and a Sweet Potato Bliss (casserole) tonight. My daughter actually did a lot of the work with the help of my mom (who took turns entertaining the baby with me). We GREW the sweet potatoes in our yard, too. Dug them up just a few weeks ago.

There you have HOME EC and LIFESKILLS. Tomorrow night's dinner is in the bag - just add some green beans and a rotisserie chicken and we have a mock Thanksgiving treat a week early.

* My kids know how to use a computer. They have picked up some mean skills by watching mama. Tonight my son scanned a bunch of his artwork (his free-time project) so he could blog about them this week. I love it that he picked scanning art over video games. That's no small accomplishment for my X-Box fanatic.

There you have TECHNOLOGY & COMPUTER LIT. And I forgot to mention that my daughter looked my recipes up on my food blog while she was cooking tonight (easier than digging through the recipe cabinet and all those cookbooks).

* My refrigerator is cleaned out and my pantry, too - helps when you decide to tackle the mess during lunch hour so you can prepare for dinner. We also folded laundry - and managed to get Daddy to help. The kids picked up the house - some without even being told to help... and we organized the school boxes while looking for a Health book that was stuck in the wrong folder. Every time we've had a distraction we ended up using it to get things done... even though they weren't on the list.

There you have ORDERLINESS and DETERMINATION. So maybe they aren't academic subjects, but try to live a functional adult life without them and see what you get.

* The baby is alive and sleeping soundly. That means we took care of his non-sleeping little hiney all day - and kept him up in the evening so he would sleep through the night. After his 2 hour morning nap, he decided he didn't want to go to sleep again until around 6:30pm. I only let him cat-nap and he managed to fight sleep until around 10:30pm. I'll be surprised if he doesn't sleep through the night tonight. The little rat was a HUGE kink in our plans today. As cute as the bugger is, I'm beginning to think that he IS our extra curricular class this year (since the plans I had for doing Photography with the big kids aren't panning out for lack of time and energy).

There you have CHILD DEVELOPMENT and BABYSITTING. My husband and I both agree that the big kids will be superb parents by the time they 'graduate' homeschool.

* No, maybe we didn't check off our school list today... but what a blessing to be together and learn with each other. We read about horned lizards that squirt blood out of their eyes, found out that we didn't really need those two eggs that got left out of the doubled coffee cake recipe, and learned that meteor showers really are amazing (kids are in the back yard enjoying one while I write this).

There's READING, BIOLOGY, EXPERIMENTATION, and ASTRONOMY.

Not sure if you would say that we are 'unschooling', but whatever it is, I'm grasping for the positive and thankful that God is allowing it to grow me to be a better mother.

Enjoying my TEACHER TRAINING 101... even when things get hairy...