Doing better!

Okay, so I learned some things from my burnout.

The first is that even on my worst, most stress-filled day, I can still feel tender mercies from a loving Heavenly Father. That is a tremendous gift, and not one that I've been able to have at all points in my life, so I'm extremely grateful. I had moments of feeling successful, even a few small bright spots of joy, and I never once degraded all the way down to "this is a failure, and it's time to send the kids back to school." And then my sister came over and watched the boys so I could leave the house for a short bookstore/milkshake run with my hubby, which was massively healing.

Also, I got a couple of awesome Spanish resources for half price. Thank you, poor management of Borders!

The second thing I learned is that I cannot afford to skip my "homeschool prep" time. My past experience with teaching has been with church, which either doesn't require much prep time, or happened infrequently enough that I had weeks of dedicated prep time for a one-shot lesson, and with music, which I know well enough that I CAN get through a lesson even if I haven't prepped for it

U.S. History, not so much. Science... definitely not.

The third thing I learned is that all the prep time in the world might not help. Monday was our first Art lesson. I probably put more prep time into that than anything else so far, mainly because FUN! And while it was indeed a fun lesson, it also didn't go hardly anything at all like I had planned, and it was messy and exhausting and it didn't go hardly anything like I had planned, you guys! Today, I could handle that just fine. On Burnout Monday, it was just one more.... something that makes a clever metaphor for "it sucked."

The fourth thing I learned is that chilling out is so incredibly beneficial. Mini-date helped enormously. By Tuesday morning, all the stress was back again. Mainly because I was facing a day full of subjects I hadn't prepared for and couldn't fake my way through. So my morning journaling went abnormally long while I ranted and raved and eventually came to the decision that I would make Tuesday a half day - I would spend the morning pulling my act together, and the afternoon doing the two subjects I was prepared for, and we would make up the other half a day sometime over the long weekend. Go to a museum or something.

It's hard to decribe the relief I felt when I came to that decision. It started off in my journal as a sort of "I wish I could do that without ruining my children and homeschooling forever" and then became a reality as I looked at it in black and white and realized it totally wouldn't do that. In fact, it would be more beneficial than not.

And it was.

So Tuesday put out the fire that caused the burnout, and I've rebuilt from there. In fact, Wednesday ended up being a really good day, homeschool-wise. Used one of my new Spanish resources with great success (learning Spanish from movies we own), too.

Today's a bust because a dental extraction will put my youngest in a non-learning state for the majority of the day. And today, that's okay. I can handle it. Actually, it just means more prep time, so yay!

I've had two other breakthroughs that have nothing to do with "poor me," but everything to do with school.

1) Scheduling. My pretty pretty psychotic-looking daily schedule has changed up a bit. I had tucked in just way too much variation to actually work for us. So the days are a bit more consistent for now, and that seems to work better.

2) Rotations. The two subjects that I have workbooks for - English and Math - are just too dry for the kids if all they get to do is spend an hour with a workbook. So I've broken up those two hours into 20-minute Station Rotations.

For Math, the Stations are Workbooks, Computer, and One-on-one with Mommy Time. That way I have a chance to go over what they've done and what they're learning next in whatever way works best for each kid (they're all such different learners!). And there are endless fun resources for math online; all I have to do is find a game that fits what they're doing and email it to them.

I couldn't find anything for Ben, though, so I made my own. And while it was a fun project and Ben enjoyed it, it was WAY too time-consuming to put together for regular use. I may do it again at the end of the year, though, for all the boys.

What's that you say? My double chin is completely oversahdowed by my fabulous hair and shining smile? Why, thank you!

Anyway, English works similarly, although we have three workbooks to work with, so usually the rotations will be one workbook, then another, then one-on-one time with me.

And now, time to take a very nervous child for an extraction! YAY MOTHERHOOD!