The first week of School/Summer

Yesterday morning I saw the first yellow school bus rumble down the road in front of our house, and I realized it was the first day of school at our local elementary.  It was also the first truly summer day we have had all year--temperatures reached the lower 80's where we are, and I am sure reached the lower 90's in Santa Cruz.  (I heard this has been the coldest summer on record since 1973--average highs at our house were in the 60's!) So, to celebrate both, we packed up our mathbooks and went down to do school at the beach. : )  Hey--those are some of the best parts of homeschooling, and I need to remind myself to celebrate more often!  And it was truly gorgeous--absolutely perfect weather, neither blistering sun or chilly breeze, but just relaxation and calm. Ahhhhh. 

Oh, and it was made all the better because the girls actually had been working up into a terrible morning, all grumpy and not making good choices.  So to go from not liking my children very much and dreading schooling. . .  to sitting on a blanket in the warm sunshine with all three girls spread out around the beach contentedly bent over their workbooks, and Smiley sitting between my legs reclined back on me, just looking at the water. . . Ahhhhhhh.

We have been doing school much of the summer.  Partly because I choose to school year round, and take breaks when we want/need them instead of at arbitrarily assigned times.  And partly because we had such good momentum at the very end of last Spring--it felt like our semester was just getting going in May!--and I wanted to keep on rolling to finish some things up.  And partly because I don't like the painful re-entry into schooling if we take too long off--two weeks off is a perfect break, just long enough to give everyone a rest and not so long that our brains and discipline all turn to mush.  And partly because, honestly, we have not met some of our learning goals for last year, and I really wanted to feel better about them before we officially tackled the new year.

Grade levels are so nebulous in homeschooling, so it is really not a big deal if we do some typically 4th grade work in 5th grade.  But my brain likes things tidy and so I can't feel like we are truly entering the next grade level if we have things undone.  And DH cares VERY much about our kids not being "behind" public school kids.  On one hand, what does that mean?  They are learning some things I did not learn until adulthood, which I am sure other 4th graders did not get this past year. . . on the other hand,  there are some basics that all 4th graders in the state of CA learned last year, and so it seems a no-brainer to take a week and cover them (seriously--you could meet all the core requirements in one month of homeschool, easily, so why not?).

So while we took off 1 or 2 weeks in June and 3 weeks in July, we have been going strong all August, and it has been good.  I made school goals easy and fun, opting to support the structure of school more than being hard on the academics.  Each older girl made a list at the beginning of the summer of her personal academic goals; for example, Sunny wanted to learn about Egypt, watercolor paint, and build an amusement park out of recycled plastic bits (which is such an awesome idea we are going to incorporate that into our plastics unit and do it with our local homeschool group!), and Merry wanted to perfect her printing and learn handwriting.  Both girls wanted to participate in a summer reading club.  So every day I would assign them only three school tasks--usually two were things I wanted them to do, and one was their choice from their list.

And the personal academic goals lists worked so well, I plan on using them every month/semester this school year.  Since the girls chose the things on their lists, they never once fussed about "having" to do them.  They got to choose what they did and yet they were things I wanted them to be doing too--win win!

Anyway, the official first day of our homeschool program was the 16th.  Since I was not psychologically or practically ready to start up the new grades, we just continued our summer school, and will begin our new school year the week after Labor Day.  That feels right, and gives us a couple of weeks to nicely round up our summer school, and ending with a back-to-school homeschool party that my friend Becky and I will host for our Vintage Homeschool Moms group.  Last year it was awesome--families made booths/displays of "What I Did During Summer Vacation" (which they had to write something for) and each got to do a presentation for everyone, and then of course we had food and the kids played and the moms caught up and dreamed for what we wanted to do together during the new school year.  This year. . . well, the party may end up being short notice, so we might not do the educational component like last time, but then again, why not?  Flexibility--again, it's one of the best things about homeschooling, and we should take full advantage of it. : )

Summer.  School.  Ahhhhhhh.