Knowing when to let the schedule go

I’ve had grand learning plans for this summer. While our homeschooling is mainly on hold, I still wanted them to be learned.  I sat and planned out themed weeks of learning and then life happened, and I had to work on knowing when to let the schedule go.

Or more accurately, June happened.

I’d planned a week of nothing in particular for the first week.  The second week the boys were at camp and I was obsessed with preparing for Rock the Rock, and the third week was Rock the Rock, and then I collapsed for a week afterward.

No problem, I was going to jump in and get going last week.  I’d made up a special “Summer Fun calendar using Illuminations (product that is sadly no longer sold).  It was genius.  I’d written general ideas of what we’d do for each day.  It was a rough schedule, and it was going to be glorious.

Then life happened again.

Monday morning a huge pressure front came in and I spent it telling the kids “only whisper, talk quieter.  Much quieter.  I felt better by the afternoon, and the kids still had their playdate, but my Mom called, and her dog wasn’t doing well.

So I spent Monday night at my Mom’s house helping her figure out if she was ready to put him down.  It was a hard night.

The next morning I called her and he had died.  So I spent the day with my Mom watching movies because our family copes with grief by going to the movies.  It’s strange, but it works.

But this meant I had two days’ worth of activities not done.  In the meantime, Jeff had realized he didn’t work on Friday, which meant none of the activities I’d planned for that day were happening either.

Slowly but surely my entire week was collapsing into a mess, and for about 30 minutes I was looking at my carefully prepared schedule falling apart.

You have to understand I never make schedules.  I was trying something new to help me get more organized because I know I need to get more organized as my kids get older and their academics get harder.

But then I realized, sometimes you need to let it go

Tomorrow is a new day.  Sometimes you just need to let all of your plans go.

On Wednesday we did one of the first activities I’d had planned for the week, making a rug like the peasants had in Medieval England (from the unit reviewed here).  The kids loved the activity, and from there they went on to make several more rugs, about 2 more crafts inspired by the rugs, and create an entirely new game based off their crafts.

If I’d stuck to the schedule I would have robbed them of their creativity, and the chance to grow themselves that way.  So, while I’m sad we didn’t get all the things done I wanted to do (and I readily admit it was an overly ambitious list, and was unlikely to get done).  I’m not sad about the results.

Do you struggle with letting the schedule go?

“My own DIY planner” by churl is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0