Mom Remembers

School's out for the summer! We finished the Kindergarten year strong with two really awesome units and a pretty consistent schedule.  That feels really good.  I also spent a lot of time this month thinking about what I will do next year!  I am planning to keep with the Waldorf-y stuff for Carl but I think that Soren (who will be in first grade) would benefit from a more rigorous and varied curriculum.  So I've been exploring our options, which is daunting as well as exciting. Soren is so ready for first grade.  He is bored with the many repetitions inherent to our Kindergarten structure.  He is also excited about formal math instruction, getting his own library card, reading Grimms' fairy tales, and possibly learning to play the piano.  He has asked me several times in the last month to start first grade early.  I am glad that he's excited about it and glad that I have three months to get it exciting for him. Carl, on the other hand, has lo...

I have been taking a mom-cation.  This means that I have been doing the bare minimum to keep my children fed and clothed while working on other projects. I haven't been doing homeschool.  I've skipped helping them with chores most days.  I haven't really been cooking all that much and I haven't scrubbed or bleached anything .  I haven't been doing boundary training with Sven or teaching Carl to read.  I have even tried to sneak out of story reading and song singing at bedtime. It's been all right.  My children are still alive.  And, surprisingly, they are still (mostly) happy. But I'm back.  I'm ready to be a parent again and not just a babysitter.  I'm ready to go on walks and supervise art projects.  I'm ready to kiss boo-boos and custom cut peanut butter sandwiches.  Wait, scratch that last one.  I never did that in the first place. Let's just say I'm back in the game.

I have thinking a lot about what I should post this month.  I thought about posting and pretending  that everything had gone according to plan.  I thought about posting and leaving out the slacker bits.  I also thought about not posting at all. I decided that honesty was the best policy. So here's the honest truth: I just didn't want to do it this month.  So I didn't. We had an awesome one-week long unit to start the month.  Then we had a very, very  long spring break. Part of the problem was that my neighbor went on vacation.  And I went on vacation.  And there was some time in between when neither of us had a lot of gumption.  And since I didn't have any kids but my own to teach for most of the month, it was very easy for me to opt out. This is worrisome.  I cannot let this kind of thing happen next year when Soren is doing first grade. Don't you want to know what I was doing while the kids were running free range? ...