Homeschool: Out of the Box

Dear Friends,

We are suffering. The weather is miserable. The children, okay, and the mom, are stir-crazy. Unless you live somewhere unaffected by winter, you are probably nodding your head right about now. If you are somewhere warm, with waves splashing and children playing in the sand, go soak your head. [giggle]

Sorry, that was the jealously talking.

Excuse me while I yell at my son for running in the house,

"THOMAS T. TROUBLE, YOU BETTER CUT THAT OUT RIGHT ABOUT NOW! DO YOU UNDERSTAND? I BETTER NOT HAVE TO TELL YOU AGAIN. PERIOD!"

Okay, got that taken care of.

How often does that have to happen?

Oh, only once... or twice... a minute... all winter.

So how are you surviving? As much as I sometimes wish for my children's homeschool education solution to appear on my doorstep in a box, it's not that easy. We have to think out of the box around here.

Well, sometimes.

Sometimes being in the box is fun.

Bee asked for a number on the side and flames out the back like a race-car. Mr. Loggerhead looked at me and said,

"She's five! How does she know anything about race-cars?"

I answered him in a word,

"Brothers."

Homeschooling with Bee is pretty easy. She would be happy spending hours with scissors, paper, writing tools and glue. And frankly, I'm happy when my children are happily [read: quietly] occupied doing constructive vs. destructive things.

So she cuts and pastes to her heart's content and then we sweep it all into this basket when we get unexpected company or it's time to use the table for things like eating. That doesn't happen that often. I mean, who needs to eat, really? Eating is for wimps.

Oh, Oh!

I'm just kidding. I feed my children on a fairly regular basis.

So, about this basket. When I have time, I weed out the less-than-fabulous pieces of 'artwork' and put tools and supplies away as they become less interesting. It works really well for us. I guess you could say we thought out of the box and into a basket. Most importantly, I always have something right there when we need a sudden distraction from things like strangling her brother.

As for that brother.  He is harder to occupy. Sometimes he is puzzling. 

No, really, he's puzzling.

He loves this one.

It came with cards that ask you to find things in the puzzle and circle them with a dry-erase pen.

It claims to teach letter sounds, numbers and colors.

T-boy has learned:

1. The letter "A"  makes a sound a lot like the one mom makes when she finds peanut butter smeared all over the cupboard doors in the kitchen when she thought he was busy with the puzzle. Aaaaaaaaa!

2.  4 is the number of puzzle pieces he can throw before Mom catches him.

3. The color blue of the dry-erase pen does not match the wood floor.

Wow, it works!

So what is the missing piece to our homeschool puzzle?

Patience, my dear, patience.

He'll get it someday. It'll fall into place and the only boxes you'll be thinking about are the one filled with tissues you'll need as you see him wave goodbye and the one filled with cookies you are going to send to his college dorm room.

But for now, if patience is thin and your view into the future clouded, go for the box. Occupy the kindergartener with a new box of crayons, convince your preschooler to hide in his toy box with a flashlight, dump half a box of crackers on the toddler's high-chair tray and go eat a box of bon-bons in the bathtub.

That works too.

Love,

Raimie