A new year

It's been almost four months.... We ended our last school year in April. I think we had a few lessons in May and there was at least one field trip in June, but overall we were done with the boring and mundane parts of school in April.

It is now July, and we are starting up again. So much has changed since we started last year. Last July was our "maiden voyage" of sorts. My best friend and I decided to become radicals. We decided that if we were going to buck the school system we might as well use it to our advantage. Instead of just keeping our kids out of a traditional classroom, we might as well home school on our own time table.

Well, it worked. We loved it. We started in July and accomplished more in the months leading up to November than we had in previous years. We took a break from the tedium the week of Thanksgiving and didn't resume until after Epiphany. When we started back up we really didn't have much to do, and we took our time accomplishing it. Despite our deviation from a typical calendar, all of our children passed their evaluations with flying colors.

And so we begin again. Yesterday we met to discuss which subjects our children would do together. We amassed a pile of textbooks, unit studies, coloring sheets, flip charts, and miscellaneous other thing. We went through them and discussed our plan of attack, and although it is always overwhelming, we agreed that we were excited once again about the months ahead of us.

Today I moved my antique teachers desk back into the playroom, once again declaring it the "school room." I will have my artistic girls working throughout the next few days to de-clutter their desks and reassign them as tables of learning, rather than free-spirited design centers.

My goal is that, by Monday, July 25th we will be ready to start another year of school.

I will have one 8th grader this year (a bit daunting, especially since he is my strong willed, trail-blazer). I will have one 3rd grader (more compliant, but starting to realize that school is becoming less fun and more work). I will have one 2nd grader (still determined to stay on her older sister's academic level), and a two-and-a-half year old (who thinks she's ready for Kindergarten).

We'll see how it goes I guess.