I Can't Do It All, Can I ? ? ?

The following is a response to an e-mail about trying to do it all.

You can't do everything every day! Go with the flow and BE FLEXIBLE!

Sounds easier than it really is!

Personally, I have to decide what to do with each of the kids on different days. Some things may be MWF and some on TT. This allows my kids time for that self-directed study that we read about in Thomas Jefferson Education. Kids need time to digest what we are discussing with them. For our own family, we start everyday together discussing the history era that we are studying and then reading a classic aloud. After that everyone goes off to their own studies. I move from child to child (or you could move from group to group if your family is large) and work with them on their level. This may be directed teaching (phonics, grammar, math, etc) or it may be a discussion of some sort. I do not discuss our readings every day of the week. My older kids know that we discuss their readings (or their audio tape and Gileskirk video lecture) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This gives me MWF to work with my younger one on whatever he needs (grammar, classic analysis, math, dictation). If I miss discussing something with one of them...oh well! Life goes on and there are so many opportunities to discuss I'm sure it will come up again.

Another bonus is the dinner table. We tend to discuss all sorts of things around the dinner table. This is usually not planned (by me). It just happens. Sometimes I ask what a particular child is reading and that starts the conversation.

Oh, and BTW, we do start our morning (after family devotions around the breakfast table) with Poetry Memorization. My oldest is balking about it because the first few poems are so silly. I encouraged her to share them with the 8-year old she is tutoring. She was not very impressed. Then, I shared some of the ideas of linguistic patterns that Andrew shares at the beginning of the Poetry bookl. I can't wait to share some of those ideas on my blog. Anyway, we are working on the 30 day, once a day part of Poetry Memorization.

I could go on, but I repeat myself: You don’t need to do everything every day. This is one of those ideas I learned from the Bluedorns in Teaching the Trivium.

Blessings,
Kerry Beck