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I really REALLY want that home school where everyone has a job duty.  Where all the children LOVE to learn, BEG to be read the Homers Iliad and Odyssey.  Where my son carves his own toys out of wood, plants his own garden, manages his own compost pile and asks for the scientific name of mushrooms.

I want to be that mother who grinds her own flour, cans her own produce, cooks everything from scratch and inspires her son to greater and greater intellectual heights.  I mean it, I REALLY, REALLY want to live like many of the home school books I have read. 

In fact, I envision myself turning over the soil in our own organic garden, after spending a morning discovering Plutarch’s heroes and the theory of relativity.  I can almost SEE myself walking through the woods with Caleb, with our Nature Book in hand, naming off the fauna and flora of this beautiful Northwoods world to which we have just recently moved.

HOWEVER, there is a glitch in the process that I am only just beginning to understand.

That glitch is the fact that I am a S.H.E. I was born a S.H.E., I will always be a S.H.E. and will more than likely DIE a S.H.E.

NOW I can create an UNschedule.  NOW I can attempt to home school.

NOW I know why everything I attempt to do fails after even just short attempts.  It is NOT my intelligence level.  It is NOT my lack of love, care, concern, sensitivity.  However, it DOES incorporate all the circumstances around me: my health, my husbands schedule, my son’s learning disability.

IT IS GENETIC.  IT IS ME.

SOOOO, here is to all the born unorganized, sidetracked women who are also attempting to home school.

Part 2

It seems as I reflect on the ways and means I was using to try to get us "on a schedule", that I have been approaching this backwards.  I have been trying to "fit" home school in to our "life.  I need to fit our "life" into "home school".

Charlotte Mason, an educator who lived in England in the late 1800’s, and whose writings have inspired one method of homeschooling, states that "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a Life".  It is NOT the latest fad diet, to be tried for a little while, then given up when it doesn’t work.  It should encompass everything we do and everything we are.

Speaking of fad diets. we have also been trying to change our eating habits for the past two years.  It has helped me at some very ill times in my life, but I have not been able to incorporate it entirely into our "lifestyle". Now I think I know WHY!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the traits of a S.H.E. is starting something and not being able to finish it because we get side tracked.  I have always wondered what we get sidetracked with.  When I am cleaning, I tend to see something in the room I just carried something into which needs attention, then I go to take care of THAT, then something ELSE takes my attention.....the first couple of chapters of Sidetracked Home Executives covers this phenomena much better than I ever could.

When I am trying to incorporate a new eating lifestyle into our lives, I get sidetracked by other food, or by the fact that I am not in my own house, cooking my own food.  Sort of getting side tracked by proxy.

Why I could not recognize getting sidetracked as my problem with home schooling is beyond me.  It is so obvious to me now.  However, what is NOT obvious is HOW to NOT get sidetracked with home schooling.

I believe one of the things I get sidetracked with is the "crafty"things I like to do that are literally laying all over the house.

That quilt I am hand quilting to hang on our new 16 foot vaulted ceiling wall.....the bedspread and pillow shams to match the new curtains and dust ruffle I finished......the Christmas presents I am knitting this year (only one left to go and that is almost done!). I dearly LOVE to cross stitch, knit, quilt, sew, crochet or basically do any kind of "home craft". 

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