School Without A Watch

I misplaced my watch on Saturday night. I miss it for several reasons:

• The light feature tells me nightly what time it is when S wakes up cold after kicking his blankets off.
• The water resistant face lets me shampoo small heads without taking the watch off.
• It tells me how well our school day is going.

Whoa! Did I say that? Do YOU say that? Is the success of the day determined by how quickly the work gets done? Sadly, this is my success gage more often than I care to admit.

The past couple of days we've worked through our learning activities sans timepiece. We let our stomachs tell us when we were hungry. We let the toddler's behavior tell us it was naptime. We let our inability to focus tell us it was time for a break. The natural rhythms weren't usurped by our anxiety over the time.

Today it worked great (yesterday was a different story entirely). When we felt like it was time for a break we found that we had accomplished more by, what turned out to be, 10:30 than we had accomplished the day before by lunchtime. THAT was nice. Now we have the afternoon to make some Scottish shortbread (still learning about the U.K.) and get ready for our own little election night party.

I just might leave the watch upstairs more often...if I ever find it again that is.