Oh look, it’s Spring Break again.
The first day of Spring break always brings with it the awful realization that Summer Break is zooming toward me. Summer is always chaotic and hard because so much of how I get things done is dependent upon the structured schedule of kids going to school. So this year I am treating Spring Break not as a holiday, but as a sort of practice run for the Summer Schedule. Right now the plan is for the mornings to be quiet, no electronics. That is when everyone will accomplish work, or chores, or quiet games. Then after lunch will be more free-form. That is when the video games will get turned on or we’ll all escape the house for awhile. I also need to figure out whether it would be best to put swim lessons first thing in the morning, thus providing impetus to get everyone out of bed. Or if it would be better to put the lessons into the afternoons and thus theoretically leave the mornings clear for working. I’m really not sure what is best there, but I’ll have to decide soon because registration will open and classes will fill up.
So far the schedule worked pretty well. It was highly distracting having the kids randomly pop into my office to ask for stuff. But then they discovered that Oh Hey! We have a sandbox! So they made themselves very dirty for several blissfully quiet hours. Link was the really impressive one this morning. He tackled mowing the front lawn (his summer responsibility) without complaint. Then decided that he really really wanted to buy the model he’d created using the Lego online designer. So he cleaned and organized our toy cupboards completely by himself. Yesterday I was looking for behaviors I want to encourage. It was very nice of him to supply such a large example today. We ordered the model in question as soon as he finished working. Our trip out of the house was to the Library, because lots of books are always a good idea.
I even managed to get all the accounting done by noon. Then I worked on layout stuff for several hours. Tomorrow there will be more layout and the first round of edits to hand off to authors. Bit by bit we work our way closer to being done.