This week was one of those weeks where things just don't go as planned. Over the summer, I spent quite a bit of time outline our Bible and history lessons for the year. Each week I put together a daily schedule of subjects for Meriel and Hollis and a weekly checklist for Eris. This week, we managed to complete all the activities for celebrating Reformation Day - this year being the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. The rest of the week seemed a lost cause.
Simeon was sick on Sunday (again). Sunday evening, Eris became violently ill. Into the wee hours of the morning on Monday, I was soothing her best I could. Just about the time Eris's sickness passed, Calla woke up. I settled Simeon, Eris, and Calla into bed with me. We managed to sleep the rest of the night fairly peacefully, but I was alert each time someone stirred. Simeon woke up at 6:30. I excused Eris from school for the day, and I was too exhausted to complete the full list of subjects with Meriel and Hollis.
Simeon vomited in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. At this point, he had been having intestinal problems for a month and the round of empirical (treating without knowing the exact bug) had not been effective. I made the decision that he had been sick too long, and it seemed that we needed to do some lab tests to figure out what was wrong. I really wanted to do the Reformation Day activities and his sickness wasn't urgent, so I planned to take him into the hospital on Wednesday. I knew it would mean that particular day would unproductive as far as school.
I was correct. After nearly 8 hours at the hospital, we were no closer to a diagnosis. (Partly because Simeon was the least sick he'd been in a long while - it always happens like that). And I knew I was going to need to go back to the hospital on Thursday to drop off a sample, meaning yet another day of little schoolwork. I was able to be thankful for the time with Simeon, as all four girls had stayed with Daddy. Though, next time we have one-on-one time, I'd rather it not be at a hospital.
Wednesday night, I was discouraged and exhausted. I was thinking about how I would manage to rearrange the schedules to fit all the schoolwork in. I quickly realized that now was not the time to figuring out solutions. I needed to rest and recoup first. In the morning, I would be able to see it all in a clearer light.
That is exactly what happened. As I was getting ready to make the trip to the hospital with Calla, I decided to take one of the girls for one-on-one time. I also realized, that I had the freedom to scrap or revamp any schedule of schooling that I needed. I am not required to teach a certain amount of material nor squeeze two weeks of learning into one. I have the joy of teaching my children so that they learn, so that they delight in learning. One of the things I can teach them is that things do not always go according to plan; we need to step back and re-evaluated what is most important and make a new plan.
So this afternoon, we did just that. We didn't stress about what we didn't do this week. We picked a few subjects to complete this week, a handful of topics to move to next week, simplified a couple of activities, and created a new completely doable plan. So even if our school week didn't go according to plan, maybe we learned a bit more than if it had.
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