constant revision

If there is one thing that is consistent about homeschooling (and parenting), it's that everything is always changing. What worked for us in January in the dead of winter with our daily school schedule is absolutely not working for us now in August with summer outside. I had planned to pick back up with a full schedule, the same as we were doing last spring, as soon as we got home from our 2-week vacation last month. We did do a couple of weeks of a modified schedule - board game day, art day, the field trips, etc. But mostly, we've not done anything "school" at all - the entire month of August, until this week, has been a complete wash. Nothing.

It has occurred to me recently that yes, actually, I will need to do some kind of change to our homeschooling time every single season. Now, we're starting Autumn - September to November, and we take most of December off for Christmas.

I sat down with Sunny and Posy a couple of weeks ago with my little planning notebook and asked what they wanted to learn about. I told them that homeschooling means we can learn about what we want to learn about - we're not stuck with just the things a regular school tells us to do. So they made some lists.

Sunny:
- ride her bike
- World's Greatest Composers book series (we get them at the library)
- Story of the World history book - we've already started it and she likes it, so we'll keep going
- learn to cook chili and beef stew by herself
- bake sugar cookies and brownies by herself
- fairy talent science - explained in another post
- the ocean
- the woods
- the earth
- make a board game
- finish writing her book about Lily Potter (her continuation of the Harry Potter series - his daughter goes to Hogwarts)

Posy:
- dinosaurs
- fairy talent science
- speed
- bones
- body insides
- the sea
- wood's spot (that's what she wrote down - she wants to go camping and explore)
- the earth

And Birdie, who is 4 so I won't start her on a "regular" workday for at least another year or 2, was very upset yesterday that she doesn't know how to read. So I need to take some focused time to start reading with her. Reading is what we do for fun, so that's not a concern for Sunny and Posy - it's not something I track for their school records. I have to tell them to stop reading, and they read anything. Fiction, nonfiction, you name it.

Anyway, I am seeing a bit of a pattern here - focus on the world itself and humanity's place in it.

As for our daily schedule that I made in January and put up on the wall ... I think the only thing that we'll still be doing from it is to start our learning time right after breakfast. No grammar-spelling-handwriting at the table to begin. I need to regroup on that and come up with another routine for this season.