Homeschooling When Sickness Strikes

A tiny girl's interpretation

There are times when everyone is so ill that all you can do is batten down the hatches and ride out the storm, and I have written of such an event on my other blog, Large Family Mothering, in case you are interested.

But there is something about having daily learning times that can make everyone feel better. For one thing, learning something new and interesting can keep everyone's minds off of their discomfort.

This is why we have decided to turn these "unavoidable delays" into times of "relative" enjoyment.

I have found that it's great to gather in one room together under some cozy blankets and read a book aloud; something that will keep all of the children's attention and still give us reasons to have some lively discussions.

This last bout of illness caused us to read part-way through Jean Fritz' book, Bully For You, Teddy Roosevelt. This man was larger-than-life, and gave us much to think about. I had also reserved and picked up numerous other biographical books On Theodore Roosevelt from the library, so I had each of the children sketch from the books as I read (one of the defining characteristics of our family is that almost everyone loves to draw).

Pretty good for 9-years-old!

After we tired of reading about this wild president, I cracked open Ray's Intellectual Arithmetic and everyone took turns figuring some problems. I jumped around in the book to accommodate all of the different levels of math we have going on. Using this book is like playing mental games with the children, and there is usually a lot of fun and laughter!

Then we finalized our morning with the reading of a few chapters from King Alfred's English, by Laurie J. White, and this time I had them practice taking notes. Then I gave them some time to write a brief narration of what we had covered, while I whipped up a stomach-friendly luncheon of soup and tea. Over lunch we had time for everyone to do a short presentation, which wrapped up the morning quite nicely and gave us all another opportunity for discussion.

Teddy as a Rough Rider

Our regularly scheduled plans for McGuffey's, Ray's and note-booking were not at all missed, and the children's education did not suffer, it was blessed in a greater way!

"Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."