I Have Fallen Off the Homeschooling Horse

It was a good few months.

Despite my initial low expectations we had gotten off to a great homeschooling start. We were all happy, enjoying it and with some minor tweaks we found a great routine. And then Zen decided to stop taking naps and everything ground to a halt.

Zen can make it incredibly difficult to have a good school session, while he gets excited about school and I include him in the projects, he is still incredibly disruptive and wants to hog all of the attention. I used to do story time, projects and crafts while Zen was awake but worked on writing and math while he slept and Shammy and I could have some peace.

I really thought that Zen had stopped napping altogether, we had several weeks when he would only fall asleep in the car on weekends. So I tried to adapt to schooling with him around. It was frustrating and nothing was working yet, we were getting the bare minimum done. And then I had my first “I don’t feel like this today” day and decided to take a break. BAD IDEA. I threw a wrench in the routine, disrupted our flow and I am having the hardest time getting back in the groove.

Now Zen is surprising us by napping again, he as asked to go to sleep and taken long naps every day for a week. I can’t use him as an excuse anymore yet I still can’t find the motivation.

All we have accomplished this week is reading 1 book per day, playing Sum Swamp, some building activities with Legos and planting seeds. I know that’s it’s better than nothing but it’s not as much as we used to and I keep trying to tell myself that it’s OK, it’s just Pre-K. We are already ahead of the game for what a child his age is “expected” to know but my Type A personality is having a hard time chilling out.

So I have decided to take a Florida winter break since it’s actually cold (by Florida standards) this week. Next week we will be vacationing at Disney and I’ll worry about trying to climb back on the homeschooling horse after we get back.