Rabbit Trails

Have you ever seen those studies that break down the time that public schooled students are actually learning? It's something like 1 1/2 hours in a 7 hour day once you subtract all the class changing, home-work handling, snack breaks and group pencil sharpening sessions. The idea of those studies are to convince homeschoolers that it's OK that we are only putting in 4-5 hours a day, since we don't have all the group distractors. WELL, those people never analyzed a day like today at my house! We'd have to put in a good 14 hours today to compete with that 1 1/2 at the public school! Days like today have so many distractions, that I'm often distracted from attending to my previous distraction.

Here's one brief example. We took a lunch break. I gave Elijah a cheese stick to eat while I made lunch. Charlie stole Elijah's cheese stick. Elijah insisted that Charlie sit in time-out. I had Alyssa handle that since Charlie is her dog.

While we were standing around watching Charlie do time, Elijah knocked a pile of junk off my desk and discovered Chuck E Cheese tokens. Since they have "big rat" on the coin, he knew what they were for and that reminded him that he likes to stare at the "big rat" pictures from his birthday on the computer.

While I was pulling up the rat photos, he then discovered his flip-flops under the desk. We had to put them on immediately, yes, on the wrong feet - with socks.

See what I mean? This is all lunch break, and that's just Elijah. I haven't mentioned that Tori kept calling me for help with her book, I had to wipe Julia, I had the distraction of trying to convince Ben that it takes longer to walk to the barn, to get his bike to ride the garbage back to the barn, that it does to just carry the garbage to the barn in the first place. I never got that through to Ben before James started his 4th pleading routine for mercy (for losing TV for the day.)

So, where was I?

This is the reason we often are not done with school by the time JD comes home from work!