It’s that stretch of winter again. Dark at 4:45, the kids are stir-crazy, and our Latin chants have started sounding like a hostage situation. We’re in Minnesota, so February is less a month and more an endurance event.
A few years ago I stopped trying to power through and started treating early February like a scheduled maintenance window. Old engineering habit: when a machine starts making noises, you don’t just turn up the radio. Here’s roughly what we do.
- One light week. Read-alouds, math review, handicrafts, a lot of sledding. Nothing new gets introduced. It isn’t lost time. It’s the week that keeps March from falling apart.
- A 20-minute audit with each kid. Three questions: What’s working? What’s dragging? What do you want more of? My 12-year-old told me our logic book was “fine but joyless.” Fair. We swapped half of it for Socratic dialogues and debate over dinner, and he’s arguing properly now. (Mixed blessing.)
- Cut one thing, don’t add one. Every winter I want to fix a slump by piling on some shiny new resource. The fix is almost always subtraction.
- Light and movement first. We school by the south window, and everyone goes outside before lunch no matter the temperature. Within reason. We’re stubborn, not reckless.
- Something to look forward to. This year it’s a family “great books night” once a week with hot chocolate and a chapter of The Hobbit read aloud in silly voices. Low effort, high morale.
It’s not magic. We still have the occasional day that ends with me staring at a pile of unfinished copywork. But the audit catches problems while they’re still small.
So, fellow northern families, and anyone else with a rough midwinter: what does your February look like? Do you take a break, change up the schedule, lean into winter studies? And for the Canadians and Alaskans here, I’d especially love to hear how you handle the really short days.