Another Home School Energizer...

From Instapundit, a link to Shooting Down the Breakfast Club, in which the author argues that the reason kids who eat breakfast do better in school is because they're "morning people" by nature. If the kids who skip breakfast, presumably because they're "night owls," would be given the opportunity to sleep longer, then they'd do well in school also. From the article,

Parents often think that children need less sleep as they grow up. The research, on the other hand, shows that adolescents still require a solid nine and a quarter hours of sleep a night—at least as much as their younger counterparts.

It doesn't mention whether or not laziness is also a factor. I've always been suspicious of that all too easy excuse, "Well I'm just not a morning person!". Regardless, Suzanne Venker, in her book, 7 Myths of Working Mothers, also writes about the very real sleep needs of children - needs that are often circumvented through the requirement to arrive at institutionalized daycare by 6 or 7 a.m. One of the beauties of home schooling is that, while you should definitely have a school schedule, you have the freedom to adjust that schedule depending on the particular needs of your children. If they stayed up late the night before, as often happens after mid-week activities at church, then school starts a bit later the next morning.