change-up for annual planning this time

At the beginning of a new year, school or otherwise, I am a big planner. I make lists of things to do, set targets to reach, the whole New Years Resolution nine yards. BIG planner. What I am finally wrapping my brain around, however, is that kids don't work in annual increments of time. At least mine don't. So the main thing for my planning this year is that I am NOT mapping out the entire year all at once. I'm doing a rough outline, but only plugging in one session at a time.

Two reasons:
1. We blast into big projects really fast, and then we fizzle out just as fast. It's kind of silly to plan some year-long project that we don't do much with. That Women's History Project last year? Sure, we read biographies about 20 different women ... in March. Almost. We read a couple before March, and a couple at the end of the year. But the bulk of the reading was in March.

2. Seasons. What my children do in January is NOT what they do in July. What they're willing to do for school is completely different. We "school" year-round but summer education is vastly different from winter education. Last year was a swift kick-in-the-head realization on that one. Our library numbers were lowest in June and July and we did very little reading at all.

So! I'm going in terms this year.
Term 1: 8 weeks in January and February, taking off the week of Feb. 29 to March 4. (But sshhh - don't tell the girls - I'm sure there will still be plenty of reading and learning, because it's Seuss Week.)
Term 2: 10 weeks from March 7 to May 13. This coordinates with the spring session of our co-op. Then another week off.
Term 3: 5 weeks from May 23 to June 24 - 4 weeks to work on outdoor skills, culminating in the last week of a 6-day camping trip in New Hampshire.

And then ... I have nothing planned. In July and August, we'll go swimming a lot. We hope to do at least one more camping trip. Lots of trips to the zoo and aquarium. I really have no idea. I'll see where we're at when we get there.