Old Time Summer

Tag: Summer

  • Summer about over: Exploring future

    Our summer wasn’t much of one. It’s been hot, muggy, dreary, allergy-prone most of the time. When it’s not gray and overcast it’s super duper hot. When it is overcast it’s not AS hot. In any case it’s the house that makes it what it is, on sunny days it’s hard to keep the house cool, keeping it “cool enough” is nye impossible. On dreary gray days it’s hard to move. So let’s explore what each means.

    Too hot in the house: nothing much gets done.

    Too dark in the house: nothing much gets done.

    That’s the truth.

    It’s always something that I’m trying to get done, more productivity, more educational stuff going on. I’ve let it go this summer, though I did want to press on and get even more done. Basically I’ve gotten my DD to embrace writing about things she’s learned, some. My DS no. He wrote a little early on, then nothing.

    Video games and cartoons take higher precedence for my boys. My girl, she’d lay in bed reading all the time, or drawing, or painting, or creating with clay.

    I see value in all the things my girl does, less value in the things my boys do. I do not dis-value video games and cartoons, but I do know it’s only something that should be in a model of many things, less time with those things and more time with un-named things (things that have more reading and thinking involved, historical, nature, human study, mathematical, language, Biblical …)

    All my children need to spend more time with the books, software and such that I have for them to learn with, instead of just the video gaming side of things, or just the artistic side of things. The middle is where there is need of deeper exploration, and that’s what I’m trying to get to happen soon. The meaty middle of educational concerns is coming up soon (after “Labor Day” and then it’ll be all that other stuff is the dessert, and I’m going to get them going on the meaty stuff sooner than that, but it’ll be a tasting affair until September, when the real eating starts.

  • Summer “School”

    For us “schooling” never ends. Even when it’s not “official” of course. All life is education.

    I’ve been very slack with the children of late, but since the 4th of July is now past I’ll be ramping up more and more as the summer goes on. There’s much to catch up on since in 2007 we had a new baby and things have been light ever since really. (My eldest born was 4 years old in 2000 when the third was born, and not officially schooling until he was 6/7, so we never “had a baby” during our official homeschooling years until 2007.)

    Unofficial education has occurred every day, but it doesn’t count towards any saved information as a whole, just fragments that apply to many things here and there, they count but not in that “official” way, in other words.

    There is much freedom in the whole year for homeschoolers who don’t “set up” an actual classroom experience in their home, so I don’t feel bad about doing school stuff during the summer. I remember how summer felt for me when I was young, but that was a different way of life, and my children don’t have that overbearing feeling of life most of the year that I had. Summer was freedom, and that’s what homeschooling is too. Freedom to learn whenever, and to get more done overall as well.

  • Catching Up

    We haven’t done any super official schooling this week, trying to catch up from last week’s sadness still, and getting paid, going out for errands over the weekend. Couple all that with my glasses breaking and getting a new eye exam to get contacts/glasses (since my prescription was overly old) suddenly … and things are in disorder more than usual. Additionally add to that the regular out-of-town stuff with my husband, and also that there are new kittens under our crawlspace (which just turned 4-weeks old) and are too much for words to describe in cuteness how they look and act now … things are just a bit too “whatever it is” to get anything done enough to sit and do much schooling.

    I’m not opposed to summer schooling at home, it’s not like it’s SCHOOL, where a summer off is so very important. 😉