What happens when the teacher is sick?

I had a day off yesterday.  Kind of.  I took one of the kids to the emergency room and I ended up being admitted to the hospital.  We are both better.  I started having some pain and needed some tests done immediately.  The tests were normal, so I ended up getting released early- by dinner time.  While I was there I was having trouble deciding whether I should ask to get the tests done asap so I could get home, or ask them to stall so I could sleep for a few days!  I actually slept almost the whole day in the hospital, not even due to any drugs. 

Steve came to the hospital, took  Luke home, and then he came back with me for awhile.  My mom is visiting and she was at home with the other kids.  The older kids did their school work and the younger ones did what school they could.  Sophia, our 7 yo, took the day off from school.  She can easily catch up on any academics she may have "missed".  They got to spend some time with Oma.

My friend once told me that she knew of a homeschooling mom who was incredibly sick for a school year- basically on bed rest.  What the sick mom did all year was read to her kids, because she could do that while being on bed rest.  The kids took standardized tests that year and they did fine.  Absolutely fine.  Maybe even better than fine.  I've always thought of that when we miss a day here or there.  It's so freeing.  I love that story.

I rarely get sick, and this was my only hospital admission outside of giving birth.  When my kids get sick, which is also infrequent, I let them just rest in bed and I have the others do as much of their regular school work as possible.  They may not to everything as I attend a sick child or children, but they can do some/most.

I have 18 years with them, so if they miss some days (or weeks) of "school" here or there, we have time to "catch up". I put the quotes around school because I'm referring to academics.  Book work.  I don't think that's all there is to school.  I think life is school.  Everything they encounter can be considered "school". 

One day, years ago, a repair man came to our house to install  a new windshield in our car.  I had never seen that done before.  I had 5 kids under 10 years old.  I had them stop "school" and all go into the garage where the man was working on the vehicle so they could watch the phenomenon.  He smiled and asked, "Don't you have school today?"  I said yes, that right now school was learning about installing windshields and he was my substitute teacher.  He got a kick out of that.  He also told them to do well in school so they wouldn't have to do what he did for a living.  I guess he didn't like his job too much, but he was very kind.