A Lesson At Starbucks

I made a decision when I woke up this morning, before I went to the gym, that we were going to have a greatly reduced school day.

We have been going continually since the new year began and have not taken a day off to relax. And I feel like we still have so much to cover until we finish up and start summer that I don't really want to take a lot of time off. I have already decided that for their spring break they can take a break from math and spelling but the language, history and literature has to be done so that we can stay on track.

But, I decided that today we would take a break from every thing except our usually Friday wrap up.

Friday's are cool because we take everything we learned this week and spend an hour or so discussing it and making sure that we are all on the same page as far as our history and literature/vocabulary goes. Sometimes if one child has focused on a particular aspect of the history lesson, written a report on something or made a poster, and the others didn't, this time gives them a chance to share what they learned. For example the week Faith did a mini- research poster on leprosy, the other kids did one on ravens. It was cool for them to teach the others what they had learned and present their work.

Any ways, Mike and I got home from the gym packed up everyone and headed to Starbucks. the kids all had cards from Christmas that they had not spent so they went up to the counter one by one and ordered their favorite decaf coffee and we grabbed a few comfortable chairs and did our wrap up at Starbucks.

I was a little worried they wouldn't be able to focus, but they did great! They were so relaxed and listened and participated in the conversation. I think their daddy was a little blown away by the amount of stuff we covered this week and he even said he was impressed by what they learned!

The Starbucks employees did look at us a little strange but it was a great way to start the day. We are off to music now!!

Kristen