Something that I absolutely treasure about homeschooling is the flexibility that it offers. During the Fall, I got most of Owen Ray's homeschooling accomplished during Elinor and Chandler's naptime. I loved getting to spend those couple hours reading and teaching without battling distractions, however adorable and winsome those distractions might be. When mid- November hit, however, I was inundated with sales on my Etsy shop. Seriously. In the single month leading up to Christmas, I made as much as I had made the entire 11 months prior. It was such a huge financial blessing for my family, but something certainly had to give. There was no way I could complete all that painting in the evenings. After discussing it with Trey, I opted to put homeschooling on hiatus. We stopped at Week 12 in our Sonlight curriculum in the middle of November and didn't touch it again until after Christmas break. While Chandler and Ellie napped, I painted. Owen Ray either played independently in the backyard or settled himself on the couch with his enormous stack of picture books. I felt a little guilty, but Trey offered lots of reassurance during this time and also did all that he could to help create more opportunities for me to paint when he was home by hanging out with the kids as much as possible and helping out with household chores.
While I am so thankful for the Lord's provision during that season, I am also so glad it's over. By the time Christmas break was ending, I was itching to get back to our former schedule. I missed Sonlight! Fortunately, Owen Ray did, as well. On the first day we started back, instead of getting through the day's lesson plans -- we zoomed through an entire week. Since then, we've had many, many more days like that. While I wasn't worried about catching up on our missed time (because I don't have to adhere to a scope and sequence like I did when I taught at the high school) I never would have dreamed we would already be weeks ahead of the Sonlight "schedule." In addition to that, we've integrated our first chapter books into our read-alouds which is exciting (
My Father's Dragon,
Elmer and the Dragon and
The Wind in the Willows). For Owen Ray to make that leap from enjoying a picture book that is comprised of bright, eye-catching illustrations on every page to appreciating (and even being captivated by) pages of text with sparse black and white drawings is pretty startling to me.
