School will be letting out in less than a month. I am so excited for the kids to come home. I love having them home with me. No need for alarms and deadlines. No rushing around in the mornings trying to get 4 kids off to school. No lunches to pack or lunch money to hand over. The pace of life slows down, and there is a rhythm that is established. A balance and an order of life that I cherish seems to grow with each passing day of summer vacation.
I have decided to home school the kids over the summer to see how it will go. A trial run if you will. I will be giving the kids about 3 weeks off for a mental break from the rigors of government school life, and then we will slowly ease into a new life based on all things that I hold sacred in my heart. I will be introducing 1 subject at a time, and then approximately every two weeks I will add another subject. I feel that this way we can see how to balance our days, and ease into the home schooling concept. I also like this approach because it will allow me to buy my curriculum in intervals. If we decide, as a family, that home schooling is not working out for us, then the kids will just go back to "regular" school in the fall. Also - because I am going to add math last (which will be the most expensive part of the curriculum) if we decide before the end of the summer that home schooling just doesn't fit our family's needs then I will have saved myself some money.
The kids are anxiously counting down the days of school left too. 16 school days left was this mornings count. Andy said that at his school they have 9 working days left followed by 7 days of fun. It will probably work out that way for the other 3 kids at the elementary school too. Everyone just seems to be worn out from this school year. I suppose it is this way every year I just feel it more this year than in previous years because I have had home schooling on my mind for the last several months.
We are getting a family pass to go swimming at a local lake this summer. We usually get a pass to the local pool that the city offers, but I am finding that each year it gets more crowded and the behavior of the people swimming becomes less and less of what I want to expose my children to day in and day out. So, we have decided to jump ship over to the less expensive, but extremely fun lake in the next down over. We went for the first time at the end of last year's swimming season, and had an absolute blast. The crowd seems a little more tame, and there is more space to spread out, so no one is on top of each other as it seems to be at the town pool.
With Bob being home in the mornings I am not sure if we will go to the lake first, and then do our schooling in the afternoon or if we will do our schooling in the afternoon, and then go to the lake after that. (I know we should probably do our schooling first, but I think that for the summer only we could probably reverse that so the kids can have some fun with their dad before he goes off to work.)
I am always excited to bring the kids home every summer, but I think that this year I might be even more excited than other years. My heart is just so full with gratitude that I sometimes feel like I could explode. I could not ask for anything more right now. I get to bring my kids home for the summer. I get to home school them this summer for a trial run. I get to have the tubal reversal surgery I have been hoping for for quite a while. I have waited a long time for this kind of contentment to wrap its arms around my heart and soul. I know that as with everything in life, "this too shall pass", and life will throw me for a loop once again, but for now I am going to enjoy each and every moment that I can.
No comments:
Post a Comment