Elective & Basics days

Today is an elective day. (Sorry, no pictures.) Now that our lives are relaxing into a new rhythm with regular employment for Rob and living here in China, we’re shifting into new seasons for our home school. We have 3 ‘Basics days’ and 2 ‘Elective days’ a week.

A Basics day starts with the basics of math, spelling, language learning, reading (for Mathew), and writing. Then we are free to do other projects or activities. An Elective day starts with whatever project or activity, with in the list of things already deemed appropriate for school time, they choose, This also includes Basics, which really does happen quite often, particularly when a child has a reward they are working toward in their Basics. Elective days also include field trip and outing days and days when Mom is not available to assist in Basics (mostly for grocery shopping).

The idea behind these Days came from seeing that morning momentum on an activity or project can be very inspiring. Since we’re home a lot, however, we decided that we only needed 2 days of this kind of freedom per week. And we didn’t want to hit burn out in the Basics, so we limit those to 3 a week. All of this happens after morning meal, daily, and weekly jobs, of course.

Today the kids have, among other things, explored and played in the neighborhood, packed their rooms for our coming move, worked on various projects, ridden bikes, practiced riding our new electric scooter, read, and counted (Mathew). I have gotten caught up on writing various blog posts (!!!), and generally enjoyed the down time. Oh, and we decided to call today an Elective Day when Rob went in to work late after getting home late from a business trip last night. This allowed us to continue the relaxed atmosphere into the day rather than trying to shift into a Basics day behind schedule.

So, there you have it: Basics days and Elective days. We like our new rhythm. May you find a comfortable rhythm in your days too!

~vbb