forcing chaos into rhythm

I have had to rearrange this fall's daily and weekly rhythms so very many times now.  Despair has definitely become involved.

We had a good plan, a plan inspired by the curricular successes of previous years and meant to be a refuge from the busyness of warm, effusive summer.  Then all the fall classes were advertised, some too good to pass up. So we revised the plan to include what we planned to do. Alas, some of those classes fell through when they teachers quit or not enough students enrolled. Now I am writing up a new schedule, late on a Sunday night. All this past week I've been telling the children that the brightly colored schedule on the wall is inaccurate, but this afternoon I saw them studying it anyway, again. I have to get a new one up or they'll be confused and worse, annoyed, all week long. Making my various schedules and agendas available for the children's perusal osaves me so much hassle and grumpiness, especially from the Oldest, who likes to get very absorbed in one thing and do it for weeks without interruption.

We keep four schedules. There's a master calendar online using the free program at 30boxes.com. This takes everything we might want to do for months in advance. It's shared with loves and friends online so we can coordinate our plans. There's a chart in rainbow pastels on the wall, showing what we're supposed to be doing with our days. That's our weekly school rhythm. There's a meal plan on the refrigerator reminding me what I stocked the fridge with for the next week or two. Also on the fridge is our monthly agenda. To make that, I drew five rows of seven boxes on the side of the white refrigerator in Sharpie. I enter the date in dry erase marker, as well as anything we are definitely doing on that date. Since the children aren't allowed access to the internet whenever they want, only for a couple of hours a day, having an agenda offline is essential. Also, they look at that spot on the fridge several times a day when they go for milk or snacks, so no one can claim they didn't know we were going out to that street fair on Saturday. It also empowers them to schedule playdates on their own. 

It's the school plan I'm making up anew today, the colorful weekly rhythm on the living room wall. It's frustrated by the cancellation of both Youngest's and Oldest's science classes. I have no plan for them for science. Much as I'd love to buy a couple of lab kits, I can't afford that on the spur of the moment. The classes were to be paid for weekly. Nature study is free, but after five years of it, I feel like I can't possibly handle another one. This month is covered because we happen to be doing geologic time and origins (of the universe and the species) in history. Come October I must have some other plan. That's only a week away! What kinds of hands-on science can we do on a tiny budget without a plan? I don't know, but I've got to get this schedule up for these little boys to look at. They are trying very hard to rely on the schedule I keep saying is faulty. I decided I'm just going to have to put a block in that says "science" and think about what it might be later. "Halfway faking it, halfway making it," goes one of my favorite songs. Turns out to be excellent homeschooling advice.

With that mental block beat, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration. I entered "Waldorf schedule" into the search tab, mostly because I wanted to paint the chart this time and I couldn't remember which day of the week was which color according to Rudolf Steiner. As well as that, I found a gem about organizing your day so that head-orientated activities are in the morning, heart-centered activities occur around lunch, and handwork is done in the afternoon. "If you center your days with heart warming activities, you can help them relax and refresh to start the second half of the day with a sense of calm and security," the author reminded me. For a few moments I was inspired. Then it occurred to me that I'm not sure I can warm my twelve-year-old's heart. He is so closed off lately. I could have a friendly drawing session with my nine-year-old, snuggle up with and read to my six-year-old, but the twelve-year-old does not want to spend time with me. Thinking that I had no way to warm my beloved firstborn's heart sent me into another funk and I set the project aside for hours to focus on what is in front of me. "Chop wood, carry water" - another excellent bit of advice for homeschool moms. I chopped asparagus instead of wood and carried a pot of water to boil it in over to the stove.

But at dinner, as we sat around and played Ha Ha Ha (in which the object is to say "ha" with a straight face) and laughed, I realized I did actually know how to connect with my oldest. Laughter always draws him out of his pubescent cave. At the end of dinner we sit around a table and play a game and laugh, and he's refreshed again. With this in mind, and with children now in bed, I looked at the lessons I wanted to do and tried to figure out which could be done as a game. I thought of Spanish. We play a version of Round Robin with Spanish flashcards in which the person who uses the word in his contribution to the story gets to keep the card. But for my six-year-old, that is definitely head work. It's hard for him, and he has to be reminded to think of it as an opportunity to learn Spanish, not a game that is supposed to be light and fun.  Each kid approaches the subjects differently! Music is definitely a heartwarmer for the six-year-old as we sing folk songs to each other, but the Oldest approaches it academically, from the head, as he struggles to master more complicated songs. The middler experiences it as handwork, because he's still in that stage of getting his hands to do what his instrument demands.

Perhaps my only hope is to leave the older children to do headwork independently all morning while I go through the whole head-heart-hands cycle with the youngest. Then I can move on to heartwork with the big boys while the youngest plays by himself, and we can do hands-on stuff in the afternoons while the youngest explores the backyard. A day within a day sounds like it will set me off-kilter, but of course I can learn to deal with it.

So, now I am working up a routine for the baby and one for the big kids, and painting and writing a new thing for the boys to stare at on the living room wall. I hope when they wake up in the morning it doesn't make them groan. They never will know how planning their days haunts and enlivens my soul.