Spring Fever and Schooling

Homeschooling:  While there about a million things I love about homeschooling, one of the best is that we can take spring break when it's really spring and not that late winter rainy/snowy/slushy week that public schools call spring.  Well actually, we can take breaks whenever the heck we want but timing is important. I think we are going to take the week after Memorial Day.  That's a big weekend for both kids with horse shows AND motocross races and then more the following weekend so they'll need the break and the weather should be good!

Last year I decided to school through the summer.  And we did, sort of.  We made it to 4th of July and then slacked off until mid-August when I started slow and ramped it up until we hit Labor Day flying fast.  The problem was that kids weren't really on board with the whole schooling through summer idea.  This year might be different.  We are going to gear down to core subjects by mid June which should result in about a 3 day per week schedule and no more than 2 hours per day.  Both of them are good with this and have agreed that it will help them stay on track and maybe get them a little ahead of where they want to be by September so we can take some extra vacation time in the fall and winter.  I LIKE that they are thinking ahead!  They both have been really plugging away even with some additions and changes in curriculum.  Motocross Boy had an easy peasy social studies gig going most of the year and I recently popped him over to AOP's Monarch 7th grade social studies with 3-4 assignments per week.  These are MUCH harder and more involved than what he was doing but he's dug right in and has done nothing less than a 73% on anything and most grades have been in the high 80's or 90's even.  Equestrian Girl added in Spanish a few weeks ago but we didn't stop doing anything else and she's doing well too!  (Don't tell her I really don't know how to grade the stuff that doesn't get graded by the software - my Spanish is horrible!)

I still muse over how well homeschooling has turned out for us.  It came to us out of necessity but by gosh, it was a gift.  I talk to friends whose children are in public school and some of the issues they are dealing with right now and I just say, thank you.  Our kids are safe, being educated better than anything they might have gotten in school, and our family is as close as any I know.  We are pretty darn lucky.