Homeschooling When Dad is Away

 Our lives are changing rapidly. 

Ever since my oldest was born I have stayed at home while my husband went to work. I've worked in various capacities (running a piano studio from the house and now blogging and writing music curriculum), but for the most part our routine and lives stayed the SAME.

Did I mention things are changing rapidly?

Now, my husband doesn't work a normal 8-5 job. He doesn't get up at the crack of dawn, go downtown to an office, and arrive home in time for dinner.

Some weeks he is traveling. Other weeks he is working from home. Right now I'm trying to remain flexible and patient.

Normally he would help with driving kids to activities during the week. 

This week I did all the driving. 

Normally he would be in bed by 10 p.m. because he had to get up at 4:30 a.m. (which meant I would go to bed then, too). 

This week I burned the midnight oil (which could be great for my blogging!). 

Normally my daughter gets a good dose of patience and love from her dad - which as a 13 year old girl is so important to her.

This week I've had to muster extra patience knowing that he's not coming home to rescue me at the end of a day.

I also know there will be weeks when he is here all the time and can take an active part in our homeschool.

I'm seeing many pros and cons to this new lifestyle, but mostly I'm holding fast to the book of Ecclesiastes and buckling down to do the best job possible with the situation God has given me. 

Change is GOOD and change is a CERTAINTY. 

My hats are off to those of you who are single mom homeschoolers or whose husbands travel a lot or are deployed with the military.  

Homeschooling when dad is away has been interesting, and I'm sure we'll be getting more used to it in the months to come. 

With nothing other than school on our agenda this week (yay!!), we were able to accomplish a lot:

Everything is Awesome 

Grant learned to play Everything is Awesome on his tin whistle. If you are in CC, you can find this file on CC connected: user amywolek under Fine Arts Week 7 - Everything is Awesome. 

Davy Crockett was the subject of an entire day this week! In fact, I posted a Davy Crockett mini unit yesterday on the blog, complete with free notebooking pages. I downloaded Who Was Davy Crockett? on Kindle and Grant took it from there. I love it when that happens! 

Grant's presentation for CC on Tuesday had to do with the Alamo and the War of 1812 - and also how Six Flags over Texas got its name. (Yes, that is actually connected to the War of 1812, I promise). 

We have done a lot of diagramming this week, and Grant loves it.  I found, however, that people have STRONG opinions about diagramming out there in the homeschool world. I posted something about it on the blog FB page and some people LOVE diagramming and others blasted me about diagramming.

Oh well - win some, lose some - right?

Anna's Week

Anna is my tough as nails kid. She's brave and courageous and doesn't show a lot of emotion. I think, however, that dad being gone is hard for her. I tried to do lots of special things for her this week. 

Anna loves to bake. She concocted these Peanut Butter Cookie Cupcakes with homemade Buttercream Frosting and Shaved Chocolate. Don't ask me for the recipe because I don't know - I just know they were good and she made them for her Challenge B class on Tuesday.

One morning I also cooked a big breakfast - which doesn't really sound so stupendous, does it? But, I am not a breakfast cooker, so I think my kids thought something was wrong when I made them pancakes!  

Challenge B is a DIFFICULT curriculum. The Latin is particularly hard. I've been proud of Anna for sticking with it. This week she spent a lot of time on Quizlet reviewing Henle Book One Unit 1 extensively. I'm actually proud of the two of us, because we sit together each day and do Latin for one hour. Every.single.day. 

This last picture in the above collage makes me really happy. My husband's father is doing SO MUCH BETTER! I expect he will be returning home in the next couple of weeks. He and Anna have a very special relationship. 

 Starr's Mill

Last Saturday was a fun family day. 

We spent some time visiting my father-in-law, and then we headed to an historic mill not far from where we live. It was fun to take in a little history and go exploring. 

We capped off our Saturday with a going away party for a young man from our church. There were lots of laughs and lots of fun to be had, which we desperately needed after the past few weeks. 

I'd love to hear from you about homeschooling when dad is away. Do you have any pointers for me? What does it look like in your house?  

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