Schedule, shhmedule

Type A, oldest child, uber planner.  I've been called these things for as long as I can remember and I own those titles!  I'm not ashamed that I'm organized and that I manage details like it's my job. It IS my job.  Not at a Fortune 500 company, but as a mother.  The problem is that I've been ordering my life by these personality traits for 40 years and all of a sudden it's not working.  Rigid schedules plus homeschooling with 6 kids is like shoveling in a blizzard... No matter how hard you work at it (doing exactly what you think you're supposed to do), the natural forces are working against you.  So this week, my kids put on their teacher hats and taught me some valuable lessons about going with the flow.

If we hadn't taken time to swim on Tuesday, this wouldn't have happened:

And if we hadn't stopped everything we were doing during Religion to examine the huge slug leaving a slime trail on the screen of the window in our school room, we would have missed the chance to run outside for a closer look.

I'm trying really hard to banish the phrase "we're behind schedule" from my vocabulary as a homeschooler.  WHO'S SCHEDULE???  It's OURS!  We make it.  So who cares if you only do half the math today and double tomorrow because today you want to spend extra time on a science experiment and it bleeds into "math time".  By the end of the week, month, year, will it really matter?  No.  Because everyone will have learned math regardless.  And hopefully they'll also understand science better, when we take the time to do things like demonstrate circular ocean surface currents with two hair dryers, a dish of water, and some Cheerios.

Don't get me wrong, we still need order and routines or certain things would never get done.  Daily chores are after dinner, weekly chores are on Friday afternoons, everyone gets dressed and makes their beds before breakfast.  But if something comes up after dinner, or on Friday afternoon, I'm trying really hard to let it go and know that change and flexibility are good things. 

(However, if anyone has some suggestions on how to get 8 and 10 year olds to bathe regularly of their own volition, I'm all ears.)