There's No Place Like Home...

So here I sit. Mandating a quiet time of 90 minutes from all my children (14 yr old down to the 7 yr.old). I have realized that I have allowed our lives to be too full of "activities" and not enough together time. This week we took a break from our regularly scheduled activities to do more enjoyable fun things. Instead of just reading about history we took this week to learn about what we have read through video documentaries, movies and the like. This has been fun. We made "Silly Putty" in preparation for our studies in the next couple weeks on WWII (what does Silly Putty have to do with WWII you ask? Well just google it and you shall see). We visited friends (this hasn't happened in such a very long time) and we took quiet times again! Oh, how I miss these moments when I can just sit in a quiet house or when I can clean and not look behind me only to find that it has been undone faster than I could do it up. I miss the sound of a quiet house with no demands on me other than those that I place upon myself. If you are homeschooler and you have not learned about quiet times then I highly recommend that you do. It is a wonderful time to teach our children how to be alone. How to refresh themselves and regenerate their energy for the afternoon. Mind you my children to do nap (although I must confess that sometimes I do when I really need one) but they simply are confinded to their beds or room (our three boys share a room so they must stay on their beds). They are required to read something (a magazine of interest, a book, a joke book, the back of cereal boxes, what ever) for the first 30 minutes of quiet time. After that they are required to stay on their beds, not talk to one another or play with one another, but to simply play something quiet and alone. My boys like things like Legos and Knex but these small toys get caught up in the bed sheets and blankets and are hard to recover with out tearing apart their bed so I have them use the cardboard lid from paper boxes to keep all the parts contained in on their beds. This way they have a flatter surface and sides to keep anything from rolling and getting lost in the sea of sheets and blankets. My daughter LOVES to color and "write." So that is the quiet activity of choice for her. She also has a room to herself so she will often pull out her polly pockets and play with those on her bedroom floor as well. In the midst of it all I just enjoy having the fireplace warming me and the time to read that book, do the dishes or laundry, or pick up the house. Ninety minutes often doesn't feel like it is quite enough time, but oh how refreshed I feel in the aftermath of it all.