Taking a break, and two links you might like

The children have been staying with their grandparents for a few days. As far as the children are concerned, it’s a holiday for them. But it’s also, of course, a holiday for my husband and me. It’s not a holiday for the grandparents, but hopefully they can recover afterwards!

This was quite a novelty, because normally we/I don’t take a break until we absolutely cannot drag ourselves onwards any longer. Taking a break before we got to that point has been nice! In How we Homeschooled Today #103 I asked how readers structure their homeschool work and time off—there are lots of varied responses if you’re looking for inspiration for your own family. We’ve just done about 4 weeks ‘on’, and it was nice to end on a high rather than end because everyone was fed up to the back teeth of all the work.

In January I intentionally made the children’s daily lists short and easily achievable. We took most of December off and I was nervous about how they’d respond to going back to work. It’s worked well, and I’m planning to now gently increase the work just a little as we move into February.

While the children were away I did my usual child-free activities: walking, reading, chatting with my husband. Also quite a lot of housework because when the children are at home I rarely manage more than the absolute minimum, and sadly the absolute minimum swiftly leads to absolute chaos. The flat feels much calmer and more pleasant to be in after a sort-out. I also read/listened to a couple of things that you might like too:

Sheku Kanneh-Mason on Desert Island Discs. The young man (he’s still only 24) who shot to fame when he played the cello at Meghan and Harry’s wedding. Sheku was an excellent Desert Islander and I enjoyed hearing about his upbringing and his responses to music. His parents were so strict about laptop use that if a child needed the family laptop for homework their parents made them leave the room while they typed in the logon password. Rachael Ringenberg wrote about the book Sheku’s mother wrote, The House of Music, which tells her own story and how she and her husband raised seven classical musicians. (Can readers outside the UK listen to BBC shows? It should also be appearing on Apple Podcasts soon.)

A friend sent me a post from School Tales of the Unexpected. It’s a father’s account (he’s also a former headteacher) of his 12 year old daughter’s anxiety about going to school, which started when she moved to secondary school (aged 11 or 12). His piece Attendance: Another Perspective is a good companion piece. There is much talk about the attendance crisis in UK schools. This father’s story is a vivid reminder of the ‘other side’ of the attendance crisis—not what the teachers see, but what the parents see. Campaigns about ‘every day counts’, that ‘attending school is vital to a child’s wellbeing’ are not remotely helpful for these families.

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