Summer Musing

This has been on my mind for awhile and I am just now getting around to publishing it....



Somehow, with home learning, "summer", as a social and emotional construct, doesn't have the same resonance for my children as it once did with me. That makes me a little…wistful, I guess. I remember the anticipation and the exciting activities surrounding the closing of the year. Summer had such bigness, so much ROOM in the idea. It felt expansive and creative and full of potential. I remember, too the boredom and loneliness that comes with August,
… but right now we are talking Last Day of School…
Summer BEGINS!

Robinson Outdoor Academy; the only real theme of ROA is that if you learned something today, you probably require a shower…if you don’t need a shower, then you better get back out there and get the job done.

Our prerequisites include, but are not limited to, mud and good shoes, ropes, tape (lots of tape, preferably duct tape), sunscreen, snacks are a must and I prefer a big sunhat. A pocket knife comes in handy and so do matches.

Let’s get outside and, I don’t know, blow something up, set something on fire, dig a hole, add some water, make a mess, study a bug or bird of new leaf. Or, start the day with helping mom make dinner, do some laundry, read a teetering stack of books, tease each other a little, watch some TV, love the kittens into submission, tie each other up (literally.), play hide and seek, bring the scooters inside the house, race around, play battleship, cheat, get caught, and complain about being bored.

We learn all the time...or ~ sometimes, NONE of the time.
We tend to play.
We play A LOT.
Bionicles ROCK.
Pokemon.
Legos.
Paint.
Zoobs.
Couch forts.
Swimming.
Spy and/or monster games are a MUST
and then we slow it down reading with Mom.

Last week we took all the matresses out of the house and had a massive sleepout with friends.

So, it is hard to conceptualize what a Summer ‘Break’ would look like. We sort of live life on our own terms (or try to…) and our “daily grind” – well, it is not much of a grind…we get up, read, we do some chores, or not, we play some games, read a little, feed the animals, figure out some intriguing math problem on the white board in the kitchen, read, read, read, cook, read, watch some movies… so take a break from what, exactly?

And yet. And yet, I find that I AM looking forwards to summer. I have been trying to figure out if this is an artifact from my years and years and more years of schooling or if it has some meat on its bones. I am leaning towards “meat.”

While we are eclectic homeschoolers and our days do not look anything like a public school day and much of the time we never even touch curriculum in the manner intended, as parents, The Man and I still have goals and hopes for our children’s education and, hey,

The public school system likes to tout that it has some sort of systematic comprehensive blueprint of what a fourth grader “should know.” Now, we can get in there and debate how well of a job the public schools do in deciding on the scope and design of a fourth grader’s educational plan, but … why reinvent the wheel? We just don’t take their wheel too seriously…

So, we do tend to follow some of what our State says we should be doing…besides, we are a part of a Charter school and if we follow their course of study…even loosely, then the cool field trips and free museum days they wrangle up are more fun.

Still, there can be a lot of pressure on the homeschooling parent; much of it self-imposed. Much of it stemming from fear...never a pretty place to come from... So, no matter how blasé I may sound about our homeschooling plan of action, no matter how cool playing with your happy kids all day sounds, I am still a bit uptight sometimes and looking forwards to summer… a break from the Break… if you will.
Go. Figure.