Adjusting to the New School Year

We just started our second week of school and it seems that we are still chasing the clock a bit. Last week we jumped into our new year with high hopes and what appeared to be a reasonable schedule. I had spent most of my summer break familiarizing myself with some new curriculum and meticulously planning out each day. Then the Lord blessed our girls with a long awaited opportunity to learn on an Arabian ranch twice a week, and me with the grace to learn flexibility and patience. We did our best last week to stay on schedule and accomplish all our assignments while working around our outside activities. By Wednesday we found that our whole schedule needed to be reworked. I shortened some time blocks where we were finishing early and lengthened others, splitting our Language Arts into two time blocks. The challenge has been to go ahead and switch subjects even if we aren't finished. Normally I would encourage the girls to finish what they are working on but I have found that it helps them to set something aside and focus on a new topic. It seems to serve as a break for their brain as they come back to the task feeling somewhat refreshed and ready to work. 

So far, we are enjoying our new curriculum choices and feel that even though we are working long hours our assignments have been meaningful and interesting. We don't feel like we are wasting time on busy-work which always seems to creep in to our home school. I think busy-work is a symptom of focusing on test scores and trivia. Why do I always get caught up in the popular opinion that knowing a bunch of trivia demonstrates learning? Choosing the correct answer on a multiple choice test doesn't prove that learning has taken place, or that the child knows how to think and learn. It only proves that a child has been trained to regurgitate disconnected facts. It reminds me of the agility courses that Jocelyn has trained Brinkley to run. Brinkley takes a jump because it's there and he doesn't care why. It makes Jocelyn happy and earns him some play time with his favorite toy. What good does it do a child to be able to jump through a hoop if she doesn't know why the hoop is there and what, if anything, she is accomplishing by doing so? I don't disagree with testing in general. I just believe that you have to be cautious with the focus of your teaching. The focus should be on the student and real learning, not the hoop. Like Addie says, "I just need to feel like I'm really doing something; something important."