Putting on the Brakes and Being Thankful

    After going rounds with my sons about getting their assignments done, I finally decided to look up this term I have been seeing, deschooling.  A2Z Homeschool explains it better than I can, but basically it's a downtime from school for an extended period of time before starting homeschooling.  Seeing as how I only recently learned the term, I did not deschool our family much before jumping right in to homeschooling.  Text books, schedules, etc.  It was going great for the first several weeks, and then progressively went down hill.  Last week I realized that Athos and Porthos were barely completing two assignments a day, and no amount of reasoning, lecturing, bribing or punishing (consequences) was helping. 
    So finally I look up this term, discuss it with my husband and suggest we let the boys take the rest of this semester off.  Regroup at the end of the year and try again in January.  We had taken all of their toys away the day before in an attempt to remove any distractions for them.  But when we made this new decision back on Monday, we decided they would need their toys back.  Tuesday we told the boys and took them to the shed to recover their things.  It was Porthos who decided that he thought only the legos should come back into his and Aramis' room, because any more than that would make it messy again.  Athos took his comic books back. 
    Then they begged to go to the library so they could check out some books.  Athos wanted the next book in the Heroes of Olympus series.  Porthos wants to learn about Theodore Roosevelt and Aramis wants to study about sharks again.  In the end, we came home with 3 shark books, 2 Roosevelt books (although they had 7 and I had to convince Porthos to take just 2 at a time) and Athos had to settle for a James Patterson novel.

    This morning Porthos and Aramis pulled out their science experiment kit and were mixing ingredients to see if they could make things bubble and foam.  They have played together at the computer.  Now they are entertaining themselves with just a few small toys and are very content. 

    So what am I thankful for?  Hindsight.  Better late then never.  Seeing my sons at peace.  Being able to let them learn what they are interested in at the moment. 
Other blogs to check out:
If Meadows Speak
Homeschooling The Well Prepared Child
Daughter Rising