My youngest daughter is every bit the hands-on learner. She loves to dive into things, and explore and manipulate her environment with her body. She possesses a tenacious need to “do for herself,” rather than have things done for her (even if she has not been shown how yet.) And rare is the lesson when she is not dancing, bouncing, climbing, rolling, or balancing with one knee on her seat, the other leg flagged out beside her in counter-weight fashion.
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Oh my gracious, it has taken me so long to finish this post! I promise that, once second grade launches and our spring sale is underway, I’ll get back into our regular schedule for these “homeschool journal” posts. I really love writing them and sharing them with you!
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Right now, my life is consumed with highlighters, red pens, stacks of printed pages, and piles and piles of books. I am up to my eyebrows in final edits for our second grade curriculum, as well as a dozen different Book Seed issues. I love the madness of creation, and I even love the tedium of the editing process. But it’s called for a temporary shift in every other aspect of my world, including homeschooling.
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I like to think we maintain a very whole-child balanced homeschool, but the truth is that I often go through phases when less-academic activities are perpetually put on the back burner. I always give plenty of space and time to free play and interest-based, curiosity-led learning, but the “good stuff,” as I call it–the art and baking and making stuff together as a family–is frequently put aside.
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Our second week back from winter break was a busy one. We added a bit more of our academic subjects in, went on a day-long field trip, finished two more projects from the Rooted Childhood January collection, and spent the weekend romping in the snow at my grandparents’ house in Monument.
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As a homeschooling parent, what you choose to expose yourself to matters. The words you read, the voices you listen to, the videos you watch–they all become a little Greek chorus in your head on the days when you’re nailing it and on the days when you’re losing it. We must be careful to choose words and voices and videos that empower us and remind us that we’re not in this alone. I treated myself to Julie Bogart’s A Gracious Space, Fall Edition at the beginning of this school year and there have been so many times I’ve been glad I did.
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““I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
This week started with blisteringly hot days and ended with the arrival of autumn, but only after a two hour haul into the mountains on Saturday to see the aspen gold. Every year, we drive up to Summit County to celebrate the equinox because it usually aligns perfectly with peek colors in high-country leaves. Autumn is my favorite season, and this day trip didn’t disappoint.
The picture you see above is not my desk. My desk is currently buried under a week’s worth of clean clothes waiting to be folded and put away. That steamy cup of coffee is also not mine. My coffee is almost always slugged back ice-cold, and I’m sure many of you fellow mamas can relate. Cold coffee and a pile of laundry are far from pin-able, but they are my reality.
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It was a wonderful, though busy, week. I had a lot of projects going on for work, which managed to fill every nook and cranny I had available, outside of homeschool time. By Saturday, I was exhausted. I’m sure waking up with Ringo-the-pup in the middle of the night has also taken its toll (a price I’m willing to pay for all those puppy-breath kisses!)
We’re only a few weeks into our homeschool year, but I’m already loving the gentle season I’ve prepared for my youngest daughter. Our days are relaxed and pressure-free. I present her activities as invitations, not requirements, and emphasize free play above any academics. I’ve tossed all semblance of to-do lists for her–in fact, I don’t even really plan her homeschooling at all (other than a very loose idea of activities I’d like us to consider.)