Weighing Your Options?
Everyone has a choice this week: (1) Celebrate Spring Break by giving up school for the week with the understanding that next week starts teacher-led digital instruction (at least in our county) or (2) Keep the very fragile rhythm going at your house without disruption so that next week is normal.
As you decide what you think is best, may I weigh in?
It takes 3 weeks for my little people to get used to a rhythm of life. Once I stop, even for a week, it takes 3 weeks for them to get used to the new rhythm again. But, breaks and celebrating and vacations are so vitally important for rest and for joy.
Here is what has worked best for us when we needed to keep momentum:
Keep a shortened instruction time: Whatever formal time you have been using to work with your kids, keep some shortened version of it at the same time and use that time to teach less formal things (ones that don’t stress you out!). Does she want to learn to make biscuits? Does he want to plant seeds? Do they want to build a fort in the backyard? Tie it to school. Let them write emails or send letters to all the people they know. Have you been wanting to do a project? Invite them into a version of it. Here, one of us is making a quilt and the other one is teaching them to build fires. Keep a reading time every day.
It will be less of a big deal to get started next Monday if the start time is the same it has always been.
Keep an afternoon downtime: Try to keep the same schedule for them to get away from each other and rest that you have been using the last few weeks. Even if the adults in your house can’t rest, it will be easier to sort out the rest of the day if all the children are entertaining themselves in their room quietly for a short block of time you can count on.
Make Spring Break moments: Whether it is special dessert, special privileges, special movies where everyone sits comatose, special family walks, special board games. a nightly fire outside, whatever fits your family…no matter how small it is, celebrate the break. Thank God for it.
