Holidays, Weekends and Time Off

This was Resurrection Weekend and Passover week.  Many also celebrate Easter. Why do I differentiate?  Well, many people celebrate eggs and bunnies while others celebrate Resurrection and others Passover and others all 3 or 2 of 3.  That is not the point of this post, so I'll spare you our convictions.
Time off from school is a wonderful thing and sometimes a detrimental thing for us. As we go back to school after time off, our routine is all messed up.  Our drive is decreased and attention spans as well.  Part of me wants to just go to school 5 days a week no matter what.  Actually we can because school can be just as much a celebration as a work day.
As I have said in previous posts, we have patterned our school schedule after our previous Christian school and they got a 4 day weekend this weekend and so do we. We did family celebrations for the holidays on Friday and Saturday, so we had a school field trip on Sunday.  We ended up with 8 hours of school over the weekend which is fantastic!  We're behind on hours and so catching up on a few was necessary.
I find that if we turn a moment into a teachable moment, we can count it as school. I just log what we did in the activity section of our grade book.
One thing I learned from being a nurse is that if it is not documented, it was not done.  HAHAHA!  Well I did a lot of things that didn't get documented because when you shave a comatose woman's legs just because you know she'd appreciate it, and it took your documentation time, you only chart what the government thinks is important like medicines, bath or no bath, and vital signs.  I see a parallel in home school.  If we are audited, they want to see the paper portion of our school days. They want to see our hours spent on school and an activity log to account for those hours.  They don't need to see lesson plans or that you spent 30 minutes cuddling with your son who cried because the new math concept seems too hard.
So while we don't have official school on the "days off" I still log that we went to Sunday School and children's church and library time and I am actually thinking about logging today's lesson in the activity log as well.  On Mondays we haul the laundry hampers from all over the house down to the laundry room and sort lights and darks.  Just because it wasn't a school day doesn't mean chores cease.  Well today's tasks took longer than normal because my daughter has made my son feel insecure of his sorting skills and today it was his turn.  We had a lesson on sorting and folding and what to do with laundry.  It is a life skill that 1st and  3rd graders in normal school often don't learn.  Well it is not in the curriculum and if other parents are like me, they feel guilty about all of the school hours the kids are gone and don't give them "big" chores because they need a break in the evenings.
While I may seem like a task master by my lessons today, I will also confess that I've allowed the kids to spend several hours playing video games today.  That is a special treat for them.  They helped in the garden and the kitchen and in the laundry, but they've been very cooperative and I can't complain.  I love my kids!