Student Workbooks and an Avalanche...

On Friday evening I decided to begin a project that would help prioritize and organize a lot of my school stuff- so that school wouldn't feel like a bigger Rock than it should be. Our Grammar, Math, Spelling, Phonics, and Science curricula are self-contained. All the papers are provided and are bound together- well except our science projects, but all that material is together in one big box. Everything else requires me to put it together, assign it, complete, and file it or trash it. I kinda fly by the seat of my pants and get it all done eventually, but NEVER file it. I just stack it in piles, sort through it six months later and trash most of it :) I decided to put everything we're going to do for the next 10 weeks in a notebook. EVERYTHING. I made maps, vocabulary crossword puzzles, history fill in the blank questions, cut dozens of period paper dolls, printed off lapbook pages, history overview pages, geography, composition, and craft assignment pages, reading lists, and I can't remember what else. It filled a 2.5" binder with divider tabs for each subject. EVERYTHING outside those five other subjects is contained in this one binder. I went through the overview pages and highlighted all the important stuff and bolded all the vocab words. I don't know if it will take us 10 weeks or less now because it goes way quicker when it's all together like that. It's fun. I got so wrapped up in it that I forgot the BIG ROCKS on Monday, and I let school become a boulder that rolled down the mountain and shook tons of big and little rocks loose on its way down. We were buried in the avalanche Tuesday. It was an awful day. Lest I forget: FOOD, COOKING, and QUIET TIME are MORE IMPORTANT than school. Sometimes I forget to eat myself, but worse, sometimes I forget to plan to eat. When you don't do convenience foods, not planning to eat is like commiting to a family fast. Fasting children don't make good students- or even good children. Missing your quiet time and dealing with hungry children as you scrounge around trying to find food for six is not a recipe for a happy mom or happy home. Tuesday was a BAD DAY, but student workbooks are AWESOME still- they're just not that awesome :)

In other great news, I've lost another pound since Saturday.