What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
I am planning reshape time again with another change in our homeschool schedule. As I prayed about how to make our week work better, I have decided to scrap a few minor things not working well for us and to reorganize a few more major things so that we spend our lesson time more efficiently and give us both a bit more freedom also.
- I have decided to have three days a week as "regular" lessons: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
- Tuesday will be solely devoted to horses, including Beautiful Feet's History of the Horse curriculum, which is a unit type study that we started some time ago, but have been doing sporadically. I have found that we spend most of the morning at the barn on Tuesdays and the Princess has not even been riding yet, which she will be as soon as the tack room is redone so I can match which bridles and saddles to use for each horse. When that happens the entire morning will be completely taken up. We work rather hard there, even my husband has mentioned that I am more muscular, so the Princess and I are rather tired in the afternoon after a warm, cleansing shower.
- Thursdays will be devoted to music and I will be getting Beautiful Feet's History of Classical Music for her to do in the van as we travel to her piano lesson. I hope to continue with Power-glide's French that day as well.
- On Wednesday, my fasting day, the afternoon will be lighter also devoted to the arts from poems to drawing to cross-stitching depending on what projects we chose to do. Currently, the Princess is working on drawing a jumping horse as part of her History of the Horse curriculum and for art. Her finished work will be entered into an art show and fund raising event involving Animal Control and Rescue Kennels in our county that needs to be in by November 5th. It is open to all students in the county so it will be competitive and I am wondering how she will do against other elementary students.
I have been toying for the last few weeks with the idea dropping the Classical Writing curriculum, but use the ideas of it in our history lesson, which will be handled more like a unit study. I will probably use Harvey's Elementary Grammar as my spine along with outlining, vocabulary, dictation, copywork, and sentence diagramming based on a model from her history lesson, or one of the other books in her horse or music curriculum. This I will decide on a week-to-week basis when I do lesson planning. It is there that I need invite my Lord's leading and trust Him that I cover everything He wishes her to know.
I have not decided exactly how work in handwriting practice. I was thinking of something like one lesson a week and then reinforced with practice during Language Arts and Spelling, because she has not improved in that area on her own.
I have been adjusting her work load and trying make it work for us for the last two months; on good days it works well but more often than not, it doesn't. The advantage of this change is that if she does not finish her work from the the regular days, it may be possible for her to finish on the next day or Saturday.
Part of me thinks that changing our schedule again may not be a real solution to all our ills. I am afraid to hope it could be. I realize that I may be doing this more for me than the Princess. I was concerned that it would not be the best way to educate her, but when I was praying about this, my Lord reminded me about the things I prayed for her to have in her life, the things that were important to me before she was born: a heart for her Lord, the husband He has chosen, gifted with the piano, and working with horses were the main ones. He has provided three of four and I feel that have to remember that piano and horses for us are every bit as important as traditional subjects, so I am going to give them a higher priority than I have been and continue to pray.
~ My Lord, please let this schedule work well for both of us and be completely in line with Your will. ~
