School at Home #5, The lookback

Thinking of you "new to homeschool" parents.  Day five of homeschooling is next up. Friday.  Which means you did it. A week of homeschooling. One week ago, who would have imagined we'd be here? Was it easy?  Probably not.  Were you exhausted and stressed?  Likely.  Do you get nervous thinking of the weeks ahead? Possibly.

I'm going to take a minute to encourage you to stop those thoughts.  Our minds have a tendency to race, worry, stress about the future and we have a tendency to feel frustration, guilt, defeat about the past.  It's so easy for our minds to be rushing and not at rest.

I'm going to encourage you to take a pause at some point in your day and reflect on the good.  Even a very terrible day likely has at least an ounce of good. All this fretting will quickly empty our cup. It's important to fill it back up again with those celebrations, as they help us remember what really matters.

The first bit of good is you are still there and you accomplished what felt impossible. I've been a homeschooling mom for years now and cannot imagine how stressful a shift to homeschooling must be all of a sudden. But you did it.

The other gems, what are they from your day/week?

I'll give you mine.

First part of the day, I was greeted by my Audra (age 7 1/2) with a thank you. She said she knows I'm a had working mama and she is thankful for me.
We enjoyed a long walk together before the rain was really bad and threw a bunch of rocks in the stream.
Kids cooperated and stayed focused for their individual work.
Our book time ended with "More, more, please more!" before lunch.
No time outs today.
I kept (mostly) calm.
Homemade turkey soup rfor lunch.
We played "Uno" as a family after lunch.  Anna-Kate (our little clown, pictured above, age 2 1/2) was on my husband's "team". They never forgot to say "Uno" as every card they played, she affirmed "NUNO" each time.
I snuck in a wee bit of sewing.
Adrian (age 9 1/2) said at the last part of the day today "Mama, today was a really good homeschooling day."

Were there hard moments int here? Absolutely.  But those I will not think about again, I'll just think of the good.  Somedays there will be a list of good like I was able to above. Somedays it might just be "We had food for lunch".  Point is, look for the good.

What was the good in your day today? Write it down. Share it with a friend. Share it with me. Let's not forget to celebrate the joy within our day, today and everyday.


My other homeschool posts:
Homeschooling, a wee bit of advice
School at home #2
#3 Choosing activities
#4 Schedules