Now, of course, none of these were bad, or in anyway negative, but they didn't fit into my neat, organized plans of what our school days were going to look like. Our school days were supposed to be tidy, seamlessly flowing from one subject to the other with fabulous science experiments exploding in our kitchen sink after skillfully painting butterflies in the garden. However, nothing has yet exploded in our sink, and no butterflies have been painted.
This morning, I felt a little frustrated by our days not going as I had planned. I woke up thinking we had nothing on the calendar today!!!! We could casually approach our day, exploring the world around us without time restrictions!!!
Then, I was informed that I had looked at the wrong week on the calendar the night before, and we actually had a Brownie meeting and a church dinner today. Those two events required me to be in the kitchen again, which meant my attention couldn't be solely on school work.
My daughter's attention was no where near school work, either. She thought it was critical to have her dolls dressed for school, take videos of her bear, and dilly-dally about everything. And, she desperately wanted to paint a watercolor picture. Not just any water color, mind you. She wanted to paint a large, difficult water color that required a lot of instruction from me.
In a moment of clarity during my frustration, I recalled that flexibility is why we homeschool. I remembered that I had promised myself this year would focus on art because art represents life. I recognized that I wanted to teach my daughter life skills and character more than history, science, or math.
So, today, I said "yes" to painting!! We have a partially painted watercolor on our living room floor, and I am proud of her for it. I'm proud of me, too, because I pushed myself to be flexible which is not something I do easily. Hopefully, we'll both learn some life skills at the end of this homeschooling adventure!
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