Springing Along

We are finally coming out of the winter doldrums here in the Pacific Northwest, which means the weather changes from cold grey rain to.... cold greenish-grey rain.  Well, not always. We do have amazing spring weather with plenty of sunny days.  I have a hard time sticking to a schedule when the weather gets nice and my kids are not at all motivated for school projects.

A quick game of foosball interrupts reading time

Books are being discarded left and right as kids go slipping outside to play... in fact, I just told my 10 year old to put her language arts assignment away and get outside!

The 8th grader sleeps in...

 ...they are finding frogs and snakes, building forts and climbing trees, taking lessons and starting spring sports... they are choosing to skip the "hands on" portions of their schoolwork so they can go off and play.  Read, fill out the worksheets, go play. And play and play and play.

Schoolwork on the trampoline

But this is why we homeschool!

We do tend to take an extended Spring Vacation that I like to call Spring Turnover (that is a term that describe the way water moves in a lake when the surface warms or cools with the seasons).  I spend my pondering hours planning my curriculum choices for next year and plan how we are going to spend the rest of this school year.

We've decided that the oldest is going to high school next year, so I don't get to be waiting excitedly with the rest of the homeschoolers for BookShark to release their high school levels.  We will just get there if we get there. 

But, I am really excited for the new Eastern Hemisphere book!  I started drooling over this level back when there was only Sonlight and my oldest was in Kindergarten.  I couldn't wait until he was in 5th grade and we could snuggle up together and read all those wonderful books!  The reality however, was that life happened and when we got to this level, he didn't like school anymore. He became the typical preteen that just wanted to sleep in and play video games. So the school year (and every year thereafter) was a flop.

But next year is my year.  Next year we will attempt this level again, this time with the whole crew: 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th graders (and 4, 3, and 1yo).  We will add the fun hands-on projects. We will snuggle and read! And to get us ready for that, I will be redesigning the rest of this year.... so stay tuned!