Frustrated Family

Usually our lessons run very smoothly. Monkey wakes in the morning and begs for her school work before she is even finished getting dressed. Those are the days that I love. Unfortunately, not every day is a perfect picture of bliss.
Take today for example. I have just finished working two night shifts on almost no sleep. I returned home at 6:30 this morning and crawled my tired self into bed, only to wake 2 hours later when Monkey woke up. Thankfully she can go to the washroom and get her clothes and get dressed on her own (at least when I work nights she can, not sure why it doesn't work the rest of the week!), this gives me an extra 1/2 hour to convince myself that I can somehow crawl out of bed.
Now, unfortunately she has also had a couple of nights of not so great sleep. So, 1 tired momma + 1 tired Monkey = very little patience!
All had been going well until getting near the end of our very short phonics lesson, reading a simple book from the Time 4 Learning lesson plan that I had printed. Just like the books she has read to me before by sounding out the letters. For some reason today the phonics part of her brain must have stayed behind in bed because she just couldn't seem to sound out the simplest words like "sad", even though she has done it before.
Well, with us both running on very little patience and her both of us getting more frustrated by the second, it was time for a break:

ENTER - THE HULA HOOP

This seems to be working great for those moments when we need to take a personal time out to re-group. She goes and does the hula hoop and I pour a coffee. Usually after only about 5 minutes we are back where we left off ready to continue.
It has been hard for me to admit that we sometimes need to do this as I am the type of person who keeps plugging away until I get it. My DH calls it stubborn, I call it persistence. Where Monkey is the type of person who needs to switch focus for a few minutes, and then comes back refreshed and ready to go.
After the frustrations this morning, I decided to do an additional fun activity this afternoon to ensure we ended on a happy note. I feel it very important to end each school session positively. I decided to pull out one of our halloween activities that wasn't scheduled until next week. And, besides, who doesn't love playing with legos!

And what is more fun then a lego ghost - Thank you Pinterest.
I would love to know what some of you do when you or your little ones have a bad day. At least I hope I am not the only one who has days like today.

Thanks
Beth