Kids have been out of school now for 1 week and 1 day, and let me tell you, this homeschool ship is sinking fast! Throw me a life preserver cause I’m jumping ship! Ha! We had a rough morning getting back into the groove of school. It’s drizzly and gloomy out and everyone just wants to be snuggled in a chair watching tv. I get it. I want to do that too. But, I know my kiddos are better when they have some kind of schedule, so we trudge forward and pull out the reading worksheets.

When I made our homeschool schedule, I purposefully alternated something academic with something creative/physical, knowing my littles will need to move and groove throughout the day instead of sitting for a long period of time. This has worked great for the most part, although I may sneak in an extra reading or math assignment when they are sitting exceptionally well.

Today, nothing was working for us. Ava made it half-way through her uppercase/lowercase matching worksheet before she started just randomly drawing lines everywhere. Eli was better with his worksheets, but then started in with the never-ending “Can I have a snack?” We moved onto coloring, where they fought over every color marker/paper/crayon (despite having 2 sets of everything!!). At this point, I decided we would eat lunch and then give the kids free time to chill out and do whatever they wanted.

10 seconds into free time, Eli started in with, “I’m bored” to which I responded in my kindest voice, “Not my problem.” Hahaha!

When I get stressed and feel overwhelmed, I immediately start saying prayers in my head. Sometimes it’s just “Jesus help me” and other times I go straight to our Blessed Mother with a “Hail Mary” prayer. In the midst of our chaos today, I remembered our church is broadcasting live at 3pm every day the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Just what we needed today!! I turned on the tv, called the kids into the family room, and told them we needed to bring Jesus into our home 🙂 Eli hid under a blanket in the chair covering his ears with his hands and refusing to look at the tv, while Ava snuggled on my lap. Instead of yelling at Eli and trying to make him pay attention, I ignored him and started to recite the prayers. After about 5 minutes, I saw his little head peek out of the blanket, so I calmly told him to use his fingers to count the 10 small beads of the Rosary and our repetitive prayer on each one. For those 15 minutes of saying the Divine Mercy Chaplet, we had total peace in our home. It reset all of our attitudes and was just what we needed to finish our day.

Lord help us tomorrow!