Thoughtworthy (First Week of School Edition!)

:: 1 ::

Yes, thank you, the first week of school went well. I’m so glad we started a week earlier than I originally planned. My youngest child immediately calmed down and stopped bothering everyone. Intellectual starvation can get ugly, and the only solution is to feed the sheep.

One of the things that is really helping us out is our computer schedule:

I just knew that if I didn’t have a clear computer schedule, we’d end up with a line of people all wanting time at the end of the day. Truly, this went beautifully this week and I am so thankful!

Internally, I really kick against the schedule goads. I hate having a set time for things. But I’ve learned that I just can’t manage this many people well without a very tightly timed schedule — the alternative is to let school hours crowd out their free afternoons, and that would be to crowd out what I think is one of the biggest benefits of homeschooling!

 

:: 2 ::

The above reminds me of Dawn’s wonderful post on scheduling from last week: Why I need a scheduled routine. After discussing reminder apps with my pretend life coach, Mystie, I settled on using the standard alarm app on my new iPod to nag me. I don’t want to keep checking my schedule, you know, but this is a transition time and so it’s not like I have it memorized.

And yes I said new iPod!!!

I finally have a forward-facing camera, after all these years. Who knows what wonders this might bring about?

 

:: 3 ::

By the way, I think an unscheduled routine has its place. It’s what I did for the first three years of homeschooling. My first year homeschooling, I had a newborn and two toddlers. We’re lucky I got dressed every day. If I had scheduled times for everything, every day would have felt like a failure. BUT. But life moves on and children grow and routines get unwieldy without the discipline of schedule.

It’s kind of like what Ecclesiastes says about there being a time for everything (see what I did there?). Homeschooling changes as the children grow and something that was perfectly appropriate (or perfectly working) at one stage needs to be altered at a later date.

And that’s okay.

 

:: 4 ::

The Afterthoughts Shop is undergoing a remodel this week. This might continue into next week because I’ve been slow answering questions due to starting our homeschool year. No internet during school hours is my general rule and so that means a delay for a lot of things, actually.

Anyhow, most of the details of this projects are behind-the-scenes stuff you’d never care about, but there are a few real benefits for you! Such as:

• More pay options. If you don’t love PayPal, you’ll be able to use a credit card instead.
• Better communication. One of the biggest issues I have is that the emails delivering the goods get lost along the way. It happens a LOT. This new system should make it easier not only for you to get what you ordered, but also to find it again if you’ve lost the link.
• Simplified Swedish Drill purchasing. Instead of having to scroll down to find the Swedish Drill license that is appropriate for your group or family, there is now a drop-down menu with all the options in one place.

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time!

Important afterthought: If you have a coupon code that is supposed to work, but doesn’t, please let me know! There is a chance I’ve not transferred all the codes properly.

 

:: 5 ::

This month in 2013:

 

This is a post for your first week of school.

 

:: 6 ::

This week’s links collection:

• Did Medieval Medicine Ever Work? from The Imaginative Conservative
  • You all know I love stuff like this, and I hate the mentality that medicine was invented the day antibiotics were invented. Nothing against antibiotics — saved my life, in fact — BUT it’s not like there wasn’t anything before in the history of mankind. This article? WAY cool!
• Yes, you can reject Antifa Commies and Alt Right Nazis at the same time from The Libertarian Republic
  • I consider them to both be on the left since they are both for collectivism, but whatevs. The whole thing was awful.
• Today, More than Ever, Read Beyond the Headlines from Challies
  • I’ve always been a read-beyond-the-headlines, don’t-believe-everything-you-read kind of girl. I really appreciated what he wrote here, and it’s a good reminder for all of us.
• Virtue signaling as self-justification from Cranach
  • A little something from my favorite Lutheran blogger.

 

:: 7 ::

If you didn’t notice, AfterCast Season 2 started yesterday! You can listen to the first episode on the blog here, or just subscribe in iTunes.

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