Once upon a time I thought that we would have the best year of school if I found the perfect day or week to start school. A day when life was settled, ed the laundry was caught up, remedy the phone did not ring, cialis thing went as planned, and most importantly, the kids were happy and ready to learn. Eight years later, and through a lot of not so perfect first days. I have learned it does not exists. I have also learned that is OK and if I am willing to lower my expectations and push forward, it will get better. Here are my suggestions from my experience on what to do if your school year is stuck waiting for perfection.
1: Your school books have not arrived or are on backorder. It is difficult to start school without books. I have experienced this personally. What to do? Start school with the subjects that you do have. You can add the other ones when they arrive. If you are missing vital subjects like math or Language Arts try going online and looking at the table of contents to the books that you are missing. If you know the first few lessons you can print worksheets for free from the internet or reuse worksheets from previous years that review the content your child would be studying; the first weeks are usually a review. When the books arrive you can combine or skip the lessons that you practiced to get back on track. Copy work is always a good grammar/handwriting option while you wait. Bible verses and poetry are a good place to start.
2. You have not planned out your year.
Start school anyway. The last few years I completed the bulk of my school planning after we started school. Most curriculums have the lessons planned for you; you just need to plan when you will complete each lesson. You can begin without knowing when your first day off school will be. As crazy as it feels to start school without my planner filled out, it felt even worse to not start school at all. I spoke with a friend this week who said that last year she didn’t fill out her planner until October. Had she waited for her schedule, I can’t imagine how much later she would have started school.
3. You are too busy. Take a look at your events and prayerfully decide if you need to prune some things from your schedule. While it is hard to feel like you are letting others down, especially if they are family, realize that you are choosing to put those plans before your child’s education. Only you can decide what your priorities should be. If there are things that cannot be changed like company visiting or a garden full of vegetables that need to be canned, try starting school with a few subjects each day. I prefer to start with math and language arts and ease into the other subjects by adding them one or two a week or every few days.
4. When there is an unexpected event. Stuff happens. Only you know how best to handle these situation. For emergencies you can postpone school for a day or a week. Other times you will have to start with whatever time that you have. One hour of school per day is five more hours the first wee than not starting at all, even if it is not what you planned. You don’t know what tomorrow or next week will bring and putting off school may not pay off after all.
I can honestly say that the most thoroughly planned first day of school could turn out to be a day that you do not want to repeat. On the other extreme, there have been years for us that starting school has been so intermeshed with life that I cannot remember what day we started, and those years were some pretty great years. Just start somewhere, you will be glad that you did.
Come see how our school year is going at Monicaheffner.com.
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