September 24, 2006

School in a Grocery Cart

One of the great things about home schooling is that we can do it anywhere. On Wednesday I had awakened at 2:45 a.m. (of course to make a trip to the bathroom) and was unable to get back to sleep. I ended up coming into the office and working a bit, eating a very early breakfast since I was to meet Sarah for a run. It was incredibly windy out, but we managed 3 miles before I had to return so Ted could leave for work.

As I was showering, the lack of sleep hit me (must have been that nice, hot water!), and I began to think that there was just no way I could do a full morning of school, then lunch, then make a trip to the commissary with all the kids to get our week and a half's worth of groceries. That had been the original plan, but obviously it would have to be changed.

I made up a math practice page, since we were taking the week off from doing any new math lessons to help Charis work on some of her addition facts that she's been having trouble with. I put the math page, her handwriting practice page, and a word search on a clip board with her pencil. Then I packed the backpack with our usual grocery shopping supplies--Leap Pad, fruit snacks, books, etc. We ate breakfast together, read our Bible story and reviewed the AWANA verses the kids were to say that evening, and then we loaded up the van. For some reading practice, I had them listen to the audio tape "Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded by Water," narrated by Charles Karault, while Charis read along in the book.

Once we got inside the store, I, the 3 children, and 2 shopping carts made our way through the aisles with very little incidents. Charis was a model student, working on her pages diligently, quite delighted that she could "do school" while we shopped! An added bonus of going in the morning was that there were hardly any other people there, aside from sweet elderly couples who generally made comments such as, "Oh, my, are all these children yours?" "Are any of them twins?" and "But my, they're so GOOD!" I have to keep from laughing when I receive such comments. I know my friend Claire, with her 5 children, and Melinda, with her 7 children (and 2 sets of twins) deserve to hear such things far more than I do! But the fact was, the children WERE indeed very good during this particular trip, and I was proud of their behavior, but even more excited by the fact that we were DONE with grocery shopping AND school before lunch time!!

After our lunch I promptly popped in a movie for the kids and took a much-needed nap!

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