Inspired both by a recent post on Martin Loopers and a general sense of homeschool burnout (after all, it’s January!), I decided to try something completely different. This seemed to be my best bet, since I can’t really enroll the kids in public school just for a couple of weeks. 
The older three kids are now beginning their school day by spending a set amount of time doing math; we started with 30 minutes but I think we’ll work that up to an hour. Previously I would assign a page (or two) each day, but right now they are to do as many (or few) pages as they are able to do in the time assigned. Is anyone surprised that today the boys were competing to see who could do the most math pages??
While they are doing their math, I work with lost boy #3 on his reading lessons and handwriting. After that he is free to play with lost boys # 4 & 5~I don’t buy the Primer math book, so we just wait until they can write their numerals and count to 20 to jump right in with Alpha.
After that, I have been reading Worshipping with Angels and Archangels to the kids. These days I have too many little boys to wrestle watch to help the older kids participate during worship, and since we just moved none of the kids are comfortable sitting with someone else yet. So I figured if we spent some time at home studying the liturgy, they might be able to follow better at church. I might even print up their own copies of the liturgy for them to make notes on at home and then use on Sunday morning; we’ll see.
We then end our school day (for now) with them spending 30-45 minutes (again I’d like to extend this to an hour) writing something, anything, preferable somewhat connected to what we’ve just read. Lost boy #1 has done the best with this; not only is he older, he’s just more inclined to think of things to write. One day he wrote a short story; another day it was an illustration of the church year with a paragraph explaining the difference between Propers and Ordinaries. He’s also making his own liturgical ‘dictionary’ by copying definitions from the glossary in the back of the book. Lost boy #2 would rather spend this hour doing more math problems, so has been dragging his heels to put words on paper. The girl has been using her time to copy the Apostle’s Creed; it’s not creative, but copywork is writing and it does pertain to the subject.
This is ‘less’ schoolwork than they might usually do, and it definitely requires less effort on my part. The challenge for me, instead, has been to keep quietly busy in the living room while they work. They are much more diligent about their work if they can see me working! I’m not sure how long we will continue doing school this way, but here is an advantage of homeschooling: If something isn’t working, we can change it. . .and if we get tired of the new way, we can always change back! 
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