12 September 2008

Day Off.

Elf and Emperor homeschool year-round. I was reading with them yesterday about an old man who was a teacher and wanted to play hookey. It occurred to me that the little boys will never get a chance to play hookey and learn from the experience. D told me that even if they went to public school, they take attendance first thing and give phone calls to parents, so the children would never be able to do that in any case.

Party pooper.

So how else are we going to get an unscheduled day off? Well, I just decided that we would take an unscheduled day off. Today. D told me I was NOT allowed to call it playing hookey, because that would teach the boys to do wrong. (sigh) So I just told the boys this morning that there would be no school. Emperor was very glad; I think he's starting to show some signs of school burnout, and it's just time for a break. Elf was about in tears. He is autistic and changes in schedule he isn't anticipating can be pretty tough. Even though we went to Panera bread this morning for breakfast, he still wasn't entirely sure that taking a day off from school is a good idea.

He will miss his reading, he tells me.

He will miss the math and Bible time. He will be sad that he has no chance to do his spelling. I actually felt sorry for him, but I felt it would be good for him to have an unscheduled day today. Now he has decided that he would like to go fishing LOL! Well, sorry, not today. Maybe I can get a deck of cards and play Go Fish with him later. Maybe that will be good enough.

Woodjie Pumpkin (J) was up in Elf and Emperor's room for a little bit playing with castle warriors. The boys got out their Game Boys. I think they will be OK just for today. D says that I should log this in my teacher book as an "inservice" day. I don't know what exactly teachers do on "inservice" days, but this one is eating too much cinnamon bread with butter, drinking cocoa and coffee and catching up on the blogs. Mmm.

4 comments:

  1. That sounds like fun. You must be very disciplined not to take a day off with your kids on a regular basis.

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  2. No, I really should take more of them. The children work every weekday with one week for Christmas and an occasional day here and there. Like, they got two off when I delivered baby S.

    I really need to lighten up a bit. Elf just has a hard time with a schedule change, so for "summer" we just do less work every day. But he was pretty upset this morning because Friday means school.

    It's sort of a teaching thing for him, too, though I don't want to stretch it and call it a "subject," but he needs to learn sometimes we need to be able to do something unexpected. Let someone else take your seat every now and then. Do we *have* to eat cereal for breakfast every day? He was pretty upset, even if going to Panera is better than eating at home.

    Imagine what "bad" unscheduled changes do to him LOL!

    ReplyDelete
  3. We had a day off yesterday...and went to the beach with our homeschool group. We stayed late, and had a fire on the beach (in fire pits designed for that purpose; we're rebellious hsers, but not THAT bad). :-) When we got in the car to go home, one of the kids said, "This was the BEST day!"

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  4. They do take attendance in our public schools, but sometimes it seem like there too many offical days off for various reasons.

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