So the groundhog saw his shadow….six more weeks of a dreary winter. It’s hard to enjoy the darkness and the cold. I crave sunlight. I crave flowers and plants. The bleakness and the COLD are not my friends. And there’s not even pretty snow to capture the child inside.
Alas, I dwell on the shadow of winter and a groundhog. I need to refocus and remember those plants are still hiding underground and will eventually emerge along with longer days of light.
In the meantime…
I’ve kept up with getting up in the morning but am struggling with getting everything on my routine done. I get sidetracked – mostly with checking Google Analytics for the new blog or putting up posts on the new blogs’ Facebook page or figuring out how to make pins for Pinterest.
It’s going well I think- as far as blogs can go in the first month. I only have 9 subscribers and one of them is me – lol, but hey, it’s the first month. My last post on healthy benefits of chocolate, titled Cocoa, Cacao, and Chocolate, Oh My! at least got a lot of comments from a few blogger people from a bloggers support page I just started following, so that’s good too. If you haven’t had a chance to take a look, here’s a link to that post! I figured it was a good one to do with St. Valentine’s Day coming up.
Other things in life are full of struggle and while I write about morning routines, gratitude and such, I ask myself if I’m being a hypocrite. No, not really- is my answer, because I know the importance of these things and I really am trying to do them. I know the struggle personally so when I encourage my readers to work on these things I also tell them imperfect progress is still progress and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I am progressing. Imperfectly. Struggling. But still progressing. The progress is that I am not giving up. I’m still working on them all. I am quite mindful of it all. And what’s more- I’m no longer beating myself up for not having it perfected. That’s the greatest progress of all.
Our schooling has made a few changes too. While I suppose it’s still leaning towards the unschooling method, it’s not really anymore. I’m still open to letting him choose things- but he hasn’t been choosing ANYTHING. And while I know that’s still a choice- it’s not one I can rest with. I’m not okay with the choice of spending HOURS on YouTube and not getting physical activity. I know he has learned things. I am astonished sometimes at the knowledge base when it comes to technology and the skills he’s learned in editing videos, and I’m not taking that away. I’m just not okay with it monopolizing his every (non)move and breath.
So for now we have moved back to our morning learning or reading time. I’ve set aside 2 1/2 hours but it’s been under 2 most of the time. The time is mostly just reading aloud to him. We started back up with Life of Fred for math- just reading aloud the first books for now. We easily breeze through 5 or 6 chapters a day. For those of you familiar with those books, I’m sure you understand how simple that is. For the rest- believe me, while it covers math concepts the first set of books are pretty easy for a middle schooler. We’re rereading though because it’s a funny story and to make sure we haven’t forgotten any of the material that is slid in there that will be referred to later in the series.
We work on a language skills book and another book I read to him about mneumonics…it covers a variety of materials and teaches various ways to learn things. We have a living books science book that focuses on zoology. It has workbooks but we’ve covered so much on nature and animals I just got the book to read for the first one to see if we like the story. Of course we have devotions and a book on the saints. And I also started reading to him the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. I’m pleasantly surprised that he seems to like that one and has much more interest than I thought he would.
Well, this is what I’m doing instead of finishing my morning routine today and the clock is telling me it’s after 9 and time to make coffee before the learning day begins- so off I go! It was good to try to catch up here though and I hope you’ll drop a line and let me know how you are. I hope to get back here soon on a regular basis. TTFN.
By the way- if you subscribe to the new blog you get a freebie– my first freebie I ever made – but it prints out small and I’m trying to figure out why. Also I will be writing a newsletter for the new blog- all very new to me but so exciting! Check out posts on Chamomile, Getting Movement in Your Day and your Morning Routine!
The Many Hats of an Orthodox Mom 