What We Dropped This Year

There is the school year we plan and there is the school year that we actually have, and rarely are the two identical. As a type A personality, this has been hard, but necessary, for me to accept. So without further adieu, here is what we dropped this year:

The Elaborate Charlotte Mason Morning Time – In other years, we have loved an elaborate Charlotte Mason style morning time. This year, it was just too much.

With three kids under the age of 7 and all of them needing me for everything, something needed to go on autopilot. That ended up being morning time. Listening to our Claritas memory work serves the purpose of a morning time, and it is automated. I pull up our Cross Seven videos and press play. All three kids listen to them. Even my toddler picked up a little of the memory work.

Next year, we’ll be doing another round of Gentle + Classical Primer and will be bringing back the fancy morning time routine.

Being Chill about Pre-K – I had every intention of unschooling my 4 year old this year, but he had other ideas. By January, he had turned into a full-fledged early elementary student. I wrote about that in more depth here.

Finishing the Math Book – Okay, so we ARE going to finish the math book during the summer, but it won’t be on day 180 of school and I have made peace with that.

Having Morning Commitments Four Days a Week – Early in the fall, we were routinely leaving the house on Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, which was way too much. We dropped regular Wednesday outings and found that much more peace ensued. This became a particular issue when I needed to add a second student to our homeschool. Ain’t nobody got time to run all over town all week when you’ve got more than one child to educate.

Keeping the Read Aloud Books Perfectly Aligned to the Memory Work – Sometimes one week’s history topic had way more resources than another week’s history topic. Sometimes my son got interested in something like birds and we camped out on the Burgess Bird Book for a while for science.

What did you drop this year? Leave me a comment and let us know!