Teacher Notes

I’ve noticed that every year, we get asked the same question: “Are you almost done with school for the summer?”  which is almost always followed up by, “Or do you do school through the summer?”

This is a really hard question for me to answer.  I’m finding a “what grade are your kids in” starting to get tricky too.  I just have started saying the grade associated with their ages, since that’s what I think people are actually asking.  If I just go by standardized testing we do that just confuses people.  By which test?  Which subject?  I’m not a very concise person, even when it comes to normally simple questions.  It’s my one weakness.

First I feel the need to explain what our school looks like.

We write.  We write stories, dictation, copywork, and spelling.  Not all of them every day, but I try to get the kids writing at least something every day.
We read.  A lot.  We have a freakish obsession with books.  We read biographies and study history and myths and poetry.
We do math through worksheets, and we calculate prices at the grocery store and figure out how to double recipes.
We explore our world.   We identify birds that fly into our yard and we dig in the dirt.  We do science experiments and we grow a garden.
We do geography puzzles and play state capitol bingo.
We get together with friends and play games.
We play instruments and study languages.
We read the newspaper and talk about current events.
We stand in lines at the bank to wait our turn.
We paint masterpieces.

I’m pretty sure that most of these things are things that most parents who send their kids to more formal schools do, but our lines of school and home are so blurred. It’s not that my kids call me “teacher” during certain hours of the day, and “mom” in the evening and all summer.  I didn’t realize before Silje went to kindergarten that my kids were homeschooled (aka learning at home) up until then.  I thought we were deciding to homeschool a few years back, but in hindsight, we decided to go back to homeschooling.  We just didn’t realize it.  Like all aspects of parenting, it was something that we’ve grown into.

We still use a box curriculum, but not religiously.  Is the question, “Is your box curriculum done?” I’d have to say, “Sort of.”  Some subjects are done.  Some books aren’t.  We skipped about 3 books and didn’t finish one, but we’ll still probably come back to the ones we skipped, and we read an additional 10 or so that wasn’t part of the plan.  We’ve met my written goals for the year, so I guess we could identify that completion.  We’ll start a new box curriculum this fall with new books and new activities.

I know it sounds disorganized, but it’s really not.  We just do school by learning throughout the day.  Our laid out box-curriculum is part of that, but really only a fraction.  Some of it is formal and planned, and some of it is informal and spontaneous.  Most of my work goes into the planned part, and yet I think most of the learning happens in the spontaneous part.  Is a growing a garden less school than working on handwriting?  I don’t think so.  It’s all learning.

I will say that with the season, the structure of our days looks different.  We spend more time outside and the kids get a longer leash to explore as I’m not worried about their nose getting frostbite in less than 5 minutes outside.  We go fishing and camping.

We still talk about current events at supper.  We still do a ton of reading.  We’ll do less spelling and more gardening.  Latin doesn’t really get touched.  In the winter we’ll do more spelling and less gardening.  We probably won’t have time to study our history books this summer, but we’ll have the good weather to do some fun science experiments.  We’ll continue to identify birds and plants throughout the year.  We’ll still play the piano and we’ll still learn how to stand in lines at banks and grocery stores.  We’ll likely still do artsy things because the natives will riot if I take away the paints.

Silje and David will each spend a few days out at Bible camp.  I know some view that as a vacation, but they come home having days of intense learning.  It’s wonderful.  Elias will do preschool VBS, and of course the 2 older kids will do some “sports camp” to work on some team sports which is just the evenings for a few days.  We have lots of things planned.  Too much, if you ask me.

I’ll admit I stress less about “school” in the summertime.  I’d say we do more “unschooling” in the summertime, though I absolutely hate that term.  I know the concept of unschooling is letting learning happen naturally, but whenever I hear it I think of wild children and no learning.  It’s my own prejudice.  The word just doesn’t work for me.  I know it is described as unstructured learning, but I view our parenting as more structured.

So I guess the final answer is to say that my children do season-appropriate school year round.

It’s the most honest I can get.  We do more seat-work in the winter, and less of it in the summer.  Learning?  Structure?  That’s constant.  At least, that’s what I’m hoping.