Homeschooling with Morning Sickness

As you may have gathered from my last post... we're expecting baby #7!  Which is a convenient excuse for my lack of blogging. And cooking. And cleaning. And... basically anything that requires more than lying on the couch! 

I am a little over 10 weeks now, and morning sickness has definitely dominated my life for the past 6 of those.  However, as any mother knows, when there are other children in the house, it's not so easy for mama to be stuck on the couch.  Especially when several of those children are school-aged and mama is the teacher!  So I thought I'd share a little on how school goes when I'm sidelined.

Basically, we just simplify.  This is rough for me, as I am a checklist kind of girl, and get a sense of accomplishment when I can get to the end of the day and see that we've done everything.  But the Lord has taught me so much in this area, mostly through periods of morning sickness - that my value and my worth is not based on my accomplishments!  So it is OK to let things go in necessary seasons.

My method of homeschooling makes this really, really easy.  First, I eliminate the subjects that need my one-on-one focus (for us, this is Spelling and Writing).  Since they are "minor" topics anyway, I have no concerns about dropping them for a while.  Second, my independent work assignment sheets allow the big kids to continue moving ahead with their work - they're not waiting around for me to direct them, and filling them out requires very minimal effort on my part.  The one difficulty I have run into is checking and going over their work everyday.  Since Fridays are light days for us and the boys don't have any independent work then, I've been waiting until Friday to meet and go over the week's work.  It's not ideal (especially when there's several days of material they've made errors on and have to go back and fix!), but again, this is for a season, so it works for now.

Thirdly... Sonlight!  I can do Bible, History, Read-Alouds and Science (excluding experiments) all from the couch.  Not only that, but their awesome Instructor's Guides make it literally "open and go".  I do not have to plan, I do not have to stress about getting things together, I do not have to hunt around for extra materials.  I keep everything I need for 6 weeks in a basket next to the couch.  So. Easy.  I mean, unbelievably easy.  I honestly believe that with any other curriculum, I'd be totally out of the game and nothing would be getting accomplished.  But Sonlight has made it really, really easy to keep on trucking.  Have I mentioned that it's really easy?  Maybe Sonlight should steal Staples' logo.

I will say that there have been some weeks in which only independent work has gotten done, or only our Sonlight portions.  That's me letting go of perfection and surviving the day.  By now I've learned that this truly is just a season, and it will pass (no matter how dreadfully long it seems to last!) so I try not to let discouragement catch up with me.  I try to keep this mindset for all areas of living during this time.  Yes, we may be eating more processed meals, or simple things that children can fix.  The house looks like it has been cleaned by children, well, because it has.  But as long as we stay on top of dishes and laundry, things run pretty well.  And let me say, having older children is such a huge blessing!  It is incredible to see the fruit of the hard work of teaching chores and obedience when they were younger!

I am praying that in a few short weeks I will be back on my feet and running things at "top speed" again, but for now, I think we're all appreciating the simplicity!