Homeschool Sick Days

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Now that fall, my absolute favorite season, is in full swing, it means the start of another, much less appealing season – cold and flu season. I’ve shared my tips for staying healthy during cold and flu season along with my favorite cough and sore throat remedy, but despite our best efforts, it’s inevitable that, at some point, we’re going to face homeschool sick days.

How do you handle homeschool sick days at your house?

How do you handle sick days at your house?

Honestly, we haven’t had much sickness over the last few years. How I handle it depends upon the severity of the illness and who is sick.

When Mom is sick

Now that I’ve got teens who work independently, I don’t expect much would change if I were sick to the point of staying in bed all day. The kids have their planners, their books, and even cell phones if I happened to be feeling too rotten to call out to them or hunt them down.

The subject that would suffer the most would be math since I usually spend some time each afternoon helping with difficult problems. If I were too sick to do that from bed, my plan is to have my teens do what they can and plan a catch-up day once I’m feeling up to par again. The catch-up day would consist of doing all the problems they needed help with – or enough that they could figure out how to do the other similar problems.

Now, when they were little, that was all a different story. If I was stay-in-the-bed-all-day sick, our regular school was put on hold. I’d like to say we snuggled up and did lots of reading and watched educational documentaries, but that would probably be a lie. If I recall correctly, it was more along the lines of hoping Brianna fed her siblings cereal, kept them pretty well in line and didn’t let anyone burn the house down before Brian got home.

How do you handle homeschool sick days at your house?

When the kids are sick

When my kids were younger and we did much of our schoolwork together, I handled sick days differently than I would now. If one of the kids wasn’t feeling well, but it wasn’t a really-feeling-rotten sickness, we would all curl up in my bed for read-aloud and Bible study time.

If there was schoolwork that didn’t require a lot of brainpower and something that they typically enjoyed – such as Easy Grammar and Daily Grams – I would often have them work on it here and there during the day as they felt up to it.

Otherwise, they’d lie in my bed and watch TV for the most part. My bed always was and still is the place everyone wants to convalesce – and usually on my side. You know, share the germy love and all.

If they were really sick, school was typically suspended for a day or two for the sick kid and it would be light days for everyone else with the well kids working on the subjects that we didn’t cover as a family. Then, we’d just pick up where we left off on the other things once everyone was well.

Now that my kids are teens and working independently of each other, the well kid will just have to carry on and the sick one can make up his or her work after he or she is recovered.

In a perfect world

That’s what real-life sick days tend to look like in the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers house. In a perfect world we might do things like:

  • Read
  • Listen to audio books
  • Watch documentaries, educational DVDs, or movies (Try these books and Netflix movie pairings for example.)
  • Listen to our favorite composers
  • Play board or card games

You know, basically your low-key, non-taxing, fun-but-still-educational stuff.

How do you handle sick days in your homeschool?

images courtesy of depositphotos

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Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.

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7 Comments

  1. The worst are the days when you think they’re just shirking and then you find out they were brewing a virus and you feel really guilty. Then you get it and realise how bad they must’ve felt and feel even worse! Luckily I was the first to get the last bug so I was able to be sympathetic mummy. 🙂

  2. If I’m sick her father will help her with anything she needs help with. Last week I was in the hospital for 4 days for a test. We decided to take a break from regular school work, because she was picking up most of the household management while I was gone. But, she read a lot, she’s also writing every day, and of course managing the housework and meals is an eductation unto itself.

  3. I was sick two weeks ago and pretty much slept through Monday. The older two I expect to get their work done. They make their own lunches anyways. Ian, I just plan on catching up the next day. This time Margaret decided to be Ian’s substitute teacher. Since our schedules are in Homeschool Tracker she knew which lessons to cover. She didn’t get her own work done of course but I let that slide. Being a substitute teacher has to count toward your education some how.

  4. We even though the kids are teens and relativity work independently have no school work when anyone is sick.

  5. Funny you should post about sick days….my daughter was sick all of last week with a sinus infection. The day I decided to finally take her to the doctor, she fell down our garage steps and broke her ankle. AND…her antibiotic is wreaking havoc on her stomach.

    Yesterday I allowed her to stay in bed, and I brought her pens, paper, a cute clipboard, her school schedule, books and laptop. She did her work with her foot propped on a pillow, ginger ale on ice and Cheezit crackers to nibble. Bless her heart, she felt pampered while doing her school work. 🙂

    Then last night my son said his throat was hurting….aye aye aye….the excitement never ends….

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