Year Two, Day One...the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Ugly.
We Started off the day with an extended issue with SA(7) over brushing his teeth. I calmly decided that the consequence would be no breakfast until the teeth were brushed. We all ate breakfast except him. Somewhere around 9:30 he decided he was hungry. I decided he'd better brush his teeth and eat before he became impossible. (My children have issues when they're hungry, for some reason.) I know it sounds weird to brush your teeth before eating, but I just want the tooth-brushing to be part of the morning routine, done as soon as he gets up. He's done so for the past couple years until the last week or so and is not communicative as to why he suddenly stopped. Anyway. To make a very, very long story short, the teeth were finally brushed about 10:00 AM, after which he scarfed down his very cold oatmeal. I managed to get through it without losing my temper, but it was a huge two-hour energy drain for our first school morning...

Good...or Bad? Not sure yet.
In the interest of spending as much time as possible outside while it's still summer, I decided to put two hours of outdoor time into the morning routine, after math and chores. The bulk of SA's schoolwork would be done after lunch. By then the boys should be ready for some time indoors, I thought. Also, any local homeschool co-op events usually take place in the morning, so I could fit them in when they come up without really altering my routine too much. However, after today I'm remembering that I often have a bit of an energy slump right after lunch, so it's really not the ideal time to do school. Today I ended up collapsing into a chair at about 3:00, utterly exhausted. Of course, that seemed to be their cue to crowd around me and climb on the back of the chair.

Don't. Touch. Me. Pretend Mama is in a bubble. Please.

Should I have different routines on different days? Get most things done in the morning on rainy days and have this new "priority outdoor time" routine just for sunny days? I just don't know. I will stick with the new routine for the week, and then decide.

Maybe good?
We started to read Pilgrim's Progress this morning. I had the bright idea that I would give the boys paper and pencil crayons and let them draw a picture for narration. That didn't go so well, but I will continue to model it a few times to see if it will catch on.

Good
I started teaching JJ(5) to read this morning. We learned the first page of Hop on Pop. Tomorrow I will scramble up the words and have him construct sentences with them to make sure he has them down pat. JJ is so eager to read. I don't think it will take him long to learn.

Also Good
I used the timer on my smart phone to make sure our lessons were short and didn't go overtime. This worked very well, and I felt that SA(7) appreciated this.

Very Good
SA(7) did his first official narration of something he read himself  (So far I have always read aloud to him.). We started with The Burgess Animal Book for Children. I kept it short, and put the timer on for ten minutes. He read silently until he came to a good place to stop, then came to me and told me what he had just read. There was some time left, so he went back and did it again. We marked where he stopped reading, and will continue tomorrow. He seemed to really enjoy this, and narrated well.

Just a question.
When am I going to do my housework? I technically have time for it in my written routine, but somehow only half of it got done today. (I'm not looking for an answer, just some commiseration...)