I’m blogging everywhere and there but here this week. So I figured I’d share a bit of what we do on our “off weeks”. This week is the last in our term. We run a 6 week “on”, 1 week “off” schedule, though not dogmatically. If we need to continue to finish things up we do, if we finish before the 6 weeks, we moved on.
Anyhow, our “Sabbath” rest weeks aren’t really rest, nor are they really “sabbath”, as in devoted wholly to seeking God in the Scriptures – but we do continue our family worship times. Our “Sabbath” weeks are our one week “change in routine” we take between each term. I got the idea LONG ago from Teri Spray of Christian Cottage Curriculum, at a CHEC conference.
On our break week we focus on learning Life Skills rather than “book learning”. It may be on cleaning and organization – whether that means learning to clean something, or digging in and tackling a project. It may be cooking or baking skills or menu planning. It may be sewing or craft skills.
When we had a garden and bought cases of fruit to put up, there was always a week of canning and freezing and dehydrating. When we did Mega-Menus we put up 6 weeks worth of meals in the freezer during this time. For the boys it might be helping dad with a remodeling project. For next week it will be finishing tanning their deer hide – and probably raking all the acorn caps out of the yard! I also plan to take some more specific, prolonged times to help dd so-close-to-16 to work on her driving skills.
Sometimes this off-week is also devoted to special help in Learning Skills – such as, if someone is stuck on a math concept and they just need extra help over the hump. Or if we’ve slacked in working on spelling or editing-of-our-writing skills, we’ll do some catching up.
It’s also a week we try to throw in some extra fun things. Play some games, perhaps go to the Children’s Museum or other “special place”. I thought we were going to be going to Omaha – but 2 wrenches got thrown into that idea. We’ll have to come up with something else. (And Omaha will end up taking a day out after we get back to our “normal” routine. — Is there really such a thing?)
What do you do to “change things up” – to keep from getting in a rut, or take a break from the “normal” – at your house?
