Monday, February 19, 2007

The Four-Day Homeschool Week

All the songs about Monday are depressing ones. (eg. Monday, Monday by the Mamas and the Papas, Manic Monday by the Bangles) The weekend is over, it's back to the daily grind, it usually rains. Not at my house. The children are playing outdoors, it's my husband's day off, I am cleaning out my closet, dinking around on the computer, making an easy lunch. Later we'll play games, maybe go shopping.

It wasn't always this way. When we first started "officially" homeschooling, I tried keeping up our routine of lessons five days a week. It didn't work. Big cleaning and organizing jobs around the house never got done, I never had any down time, I didn't play with my children anymore -- just "did school". It was like an avalanche of days, and Mondays were the worst.

Then I was leafing through a Sonlight catalog ( I don't use Sonlight, but I like looking through their catalogs to get ideas.), and noticed they offered a choice of four-day and five-day curriculum. Wow! You mean it's really okay to just do formal lessons four days a week? (Duh!)

It works for us. Less IS more. Don't you love Mondays?