We started school today. Later than local schools, later than southern schools, perfectly on time for us. This is Emma’s 12th year, Sophie’s 11th year, Silas’ 9th year. And it’s my 27th year of homeschooling.
First a summer summary:
Our summer was too short, too busy, full of wonderful moments, really hard, brought lots of changes, dry and hot, then dry and cool. The projects I listed out at the beginning of June are still left undone. We did get lots of work done on Zach’s home, though he still hasn’t been able to move in (plumbing is important).
All the teens had summer jobs – Emma worked full time at a local summer camp and Sophie and Silas cleaned and mowed the lawn for an out-of-town owner of an short term rental a few towns away. Emma caught a ride with her older brother, but I drove Sophie and Silas back and forth. Sophie wanted to improve her dance technique and she signed up for a three week long ballet intensive at a new to us studio. Then she signed up for a two week musical theatre camp at the same studio and convinced Silas to join her. All that camp time required a LOT of driving time. One of the down sides to living in a rural area is that everything is far away, and this summer it meant driving about 4 hours every day the kids were at camp. It was SO worthwhile though! Sophie and Silas discovered that they enjoy musical theatre – dancing, acting, and even singing! They made great friends and the studio is a great fit for them, so they decided to continue dancing there. Emma will continue dancing with the same studio they’ve all been with for several years. Having five dancers (three at home) dancing with two different studios is going to be a challenge, but we always find a way to make things work. Just don’t be surprised if this is not only my first post of the school year, but also my last. 🙂
Back to Homeschooling:
Ordinarily, I will have spent at least a little time preparing for our school year. Mapping out our educational goals for the year, spending time matching history and literature selections, focusing on how each child learns best, reviewing what we’ve already done and what we still want to accomplish.
But this hasn’t been an ordinary start to the homeschool year. I didn’t have a chance to start looking at what we wanted to do for the year until yesterday. I have multiple pages of book lists and notes and goals for each child. This morning we started with math and while they worked I decided on what we’re doing this week for history and literature. I’m still looking through our science options. We also have plenty (too many?) of interests and electives. I’d like to have all three working on similar subject matter, it makes dinner time conversation so much more cohesive that way. But I also need to balance that with their individual needs and interests.
Here’s how we homeschool – read good books, talk about them. Add a math curriculum and have them write an essay often. Too simple? It may sound that way, but it works so very well. The only hard part is narrowing down which books to read.