Utter Bliss & Just a Tish

After the long and rainy memorial day weekend with Matt home from work, this has been our first official day of summer (even though we only saw the sun for about 15 seconds this afternoon and it only hit a high of 60-ish).

Making Banana Popsicles

As my alarm went off this morning I woke up with a smile on my face as my first thought drifted into consciousness "I don't have to get the kids ready for school today, or tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that. I may never have to get them ready for school again". See, I knew that we wouldn't have to be on anyone's timetable but ours. I knew that I could take my time getting up and moving for the day, something that generally happens about as fast as a turtle trudging through a vat of chunky peanut butter. I knew there would be no "angry Mom" at breakfast this morning because it didn't matter how long it took them to finish. They could laugh and tell stories and joke as much as they wanted. There would be no packing of lunch boxes, or snack bags,

"Mom! It looks like a lunchable!" Mom = 1 Processed lunch crap = 0

no last minute papers to sign because someone forgot to ask me the day before, no frantic searches for misplaced shoes or show and tells, no waiting to exit the driveway as yet another reminder to buckle up is begrudgingly issued, and no more blocking the drop off line for far to long because nothing could possibly matter more than an ice cycle hanging off the wheel well, or the patterns that boots make in the snow, or the bluebells growing along the sidewalk, or catching a rain drop on your tongue (my munchkins do a MUCH better job of enjoying the journey than I do, but I'm learning, or maybe I should say re-learning). Schedules in the early morning have NEVER been my friend. They do NOT jive with how I'm wired, and I knew that today, and many days from here on out, we had nowhere we needed to be, and we had all day to get there. It was complete and utter bliss. Don't get me wrong! I love to get out and do things, and be sociable, very much so, but not if it's anytime before say 10-ish in general. I was having a homeschooling discussion with a friend of mine the other day who also homeschools, and when I answered her "are you a morning person" question with a quick and resounding "NO" she smiled and replied "Stephanie, you're going to LOVE homeschooling." I think she may be very very right.

There's almost nothing you can't find at Savers!

Speaking of homeschooling, I was at my favorite thrift shop this week doing some clothes shopping and thought, "I'll go see if I can find anything we might be able to use. Probably not, but it can't hurt." I was pleasantly surprised and ended up coming home with these, and I didn't pay more than $2 for any of them which fits nicely with our schooling budget. lol I really like all of them, but I'm SUPER excited about the Circle-Time Poetry Science book. It contains 20 original poems AND ideas for pulling science, math, English and art lessons from each one. PLUS as I was going through the pages I kept thinking of things on my Schooling Pintrest board that would tie right in with the themes. So, I pulled out my sticky notes and began adding in ideas! I've been looking at Khan Academy or IXL for math, and possibly Story of the World for history. I'm beginning to feel a tish less panicky about the whole thing. Just a tish.

2nd Grade, Summer & SO Many Choices

A Milk Glass cup that belonged to my Nana, filled with sunshine from my kiddos

Tomorrow we will have a 2nd grader in our house, and our summer will have officially begun!

Last summer I had all these lofty goals, of reading and journaling and cooking and taking pictures every day with the kids, and swimming and science experiments and camping and.......most of which never happened of course. I always look forward to summer as being "slower paced" but it never turns out that way. In fact most summers end up feeling way busier than the school year which makes for a very frazzled mommy year round. This year, I'm not planning much of anything except for swimming, camping and our library's reading program. We'll see if that plan works out any differently than the previous one. *crossing fingers* 

We just purchased a family pass to the new aquatic center in town so we'll probably spend a good portion of time there if it ever gets and stays warm enough to not require thermal swimwear. We also registered Bre for swimming lessons again. I really hope she enjoys them way more than I did, and participates beyond "needs to work on getting more comfortable being in the water" like she did 2 years ago. Last summer she broke her arm a few weeks before lessons began, and because it was a full arm cast was unable to get near a pool till it came off about week or so before school started. Hopefully we can make up for all that lost time in the water this year.

THE biggest goal of mine this summer is figuring out what we'll be using for homeschool curriculum in the fall. Yes, we've pretty much all but decided that this is the direction we'll be going next year. It just fits the best with our core values and desires for our kiddlets. It hasn't been an easy decision for sure, but we think it's the right one. I struggled for a really long time with how homeschooling would fit/or not into the 10 year plan of building Neher Confection into THE cupcake place in our area. I won't bore you with all the details of my internal dialogue on the topic, but I basically came to the conclusion of,

"Neher Confection was going to be my "thing" once the kids were in school. I have to have a "thing", a goal to be working towards. It was going to serve as a provider of purpose for me. Now, my purpose has changed. I need to be teacher more than I need to be business woman. They are more important than my name on a marque. Neher Confection will remain on a special order basis, but it won't be my main focus, just my hobby, until the time my purpose shifts again. Family first, business second."

Deciding on which curriculum to use is proving to be a bit of a "catch 22" though. We're choosing home-schooling to (among many other things) save money on school tuition, but it would be super easy to spend that much, if not more, on prepared materials for home learning. All the homeschooling Moms I know tell me, "You WILL buy something you think you'll love and then end up not using it. It's normal." But we don't have a lot of pocket change to be playing russian roulette with all these products, so I'm struggling a bit with this one. I get bored with nothing but worksheets although they do provide a nice structure. I love the idea of totally immersing ourselves in a unit study, but do I have the time and resources to pull something like that together? Do we follow a more classical education or are we Charlotte Mason people? I know some of these questions will answer themselves as we go along and figure ourselves out, but that doesn't help me find a starting point to launch us from right now. Hopefully the next 3 months will prove enough time to figure out which way our compass is pointing as we embark on this new learning adventure together.