The Sun Came Out!

The last few weeks have seen a lot of rain and overcast skies here. The rain situation across the whole country has actually been terrible this weekend, with widespread flooding in several states, destruction of towns and loss of life. Here in CDMX it seemed to mainly flood the Metro system and any sunken roadway, which makes traffic. (But everything makes traffic here.) The mood of people generally seemed to be a little more annoyed, a little quicker to honk horns in gridlock. I even saw two men get into a literal fistfight after a small collision between a car and a bicycle. This happened on our street after a box truck sheered off a massive limb of a tree, dropping it onto some power lines, dangling dangerously over Avenida Nuevo Leon. Eventually a fleet of bomberos arrived, but it was probably a good 30 minutes of rush hour traffic swerving around tree branches and electrical cables. It was an extraordinary enough event that many passersby stopped to look or take a photo. But there was also a steady wave of commuter cyclists pouring down the street nearly running directly into the power lines as it got dark, even after the police closed the road to traffic. Lots of horns honking and police blowing their whistles. This story would not surprise any Chilango. They say "Mexico, Mexico" or sometimes the slightly more vulgar "Pinche Mexico, te amo." Basically, this place is crazy, but people love it, despite that or maybe because of that.

I had to navigate the medical system for the first time. One of the kids got sick, but we were able to get a doctor to come to the house, provide a thorough exam, and give me a list of medicine. I went across the street to one of three pharmacies on the street. There are much cheaper ways to do this, but even with name brand medicine and a house call from an English speaking doctor, the total cash price was still under $200 US. 

So rainy season is winding down, hopefully we will be back out doing fun things around the city in the coming weeks and all of our family members will be feeling better. 

One Month

It has been a month. El tiempo ha pasado rapidísimo. Walk Spanish language school was intense and at times exhausting. We arrived on a Sunday night and started Monday morning. Getting homeschool kids who generally enjoy a very relaxed schedule, up and to a cafe at a different location each day, in CDMX traffic, by 9 am was a challenge. However, it turned out to be an overwhelmingly positive experience. We loved our teachers, and the instruction was fun but challenging. They spoke to us in Spanish almost all the time, offering explanations in English as necessary. I have several years of Spanish study under my belt- I studied Spanish in high school, and worked in a bilingual school for two years. Oral fluency has long been challenging for me, but I can read and understand fairly well. The kids were basically coming in cold with a few weeks of Duolingo practice and exposure to whatever Lucha Libre matches M shared with them. This made their growth over a few weeks especially exciting. 

We finished school each day around 1 and for the most part began our journey back to the apartment straight away, often on foot. If the walk is less than an hour, you may as well just walk, to save yourself the trouble getting gridlocked in an Uber. Getting groceries, finding dry outdoor places for Max to run around in, figuring out what to do with trash and recycling...all of these little daily tasks take a lot of thought. Bathrooms are very common in sit down cafes and restaurants and are free. But in the parks you need some coins to get access. They are staffed by someone who will hand you a few squares of toilet paper. Not actually a bad system as the public restrooms remain clean and safe, but I found that I needed a lot more coins to account for four people using the bathroom when we go out. 

It is rainy season, the rainiest rainy season in the history of meteorology here. It is often sunny in the morning and will rain somewhere in the city at some point in the afternoon most days. Sometimes, though, the rain is widespread and heavy. Umbrellas are sometimes forbidden in the museums, as are backpacks. But you definitely want to carry a full arsenal of umbrellas and ponchos at all times, so bring extra pesos for the bag check. But don't leave anything valuable in that bag, so bring a secondary, small bag to bring your wallet and phone with you. If you do not bring a poncho it is guaranteed to rain on you. 

I designated a week to be a sort of rest week, to catch up on non-Spanish school work and clean the apartment and try to figure out some more meals to cook at home. We also connected with some of the homeschoolers/unschoolers here and are trying out some of the activities they do. Parkour was a big hit. 

CDMX First Impressions

We arrived in the evening, so the spread of lights across the valley stood out, ringed by mountains. The sun was setting through towering thunderheads, but our landing was pretty smooth despite the thunderstorms. Taxiing in to the gate, a message of welcome in English and Spanish and then, pouring off the plane with everyone else, a sea of people sorting themselves into lines. Mexicanos to one side. Extranjeros to the other. Wheeling our brand new suitcases out of baggage claim. Nothing to Declare.

That first car ride, as well as the evening stroll we took to stretch travel weary legs, did not convince me that we were in fact in a metropolis of 22 million. It was kind of quiet and peaceful on a Sunday night, dark and drizzly under the tree canopy. CDMX stretches across a valley, so you are cradled in the neighborhood. Thick walls block the noises. Disturbances even a few streets away are often inaudible. During the first week, we came across a noisy demonstration...there is always a strike or a protest....but walking a few blocks and turning a corner muted the sounds of chanting and drums to silence. Occasionally we find ourselves on a hill or on a high floor of a building with a view, and if it is a clear day, the city is a sea of rooftops, spreading out with no breaks, in all directions. 

People are friendly, everything is in Spanish. I am utterly lost when it comes to the self checkout stations in the grocery store (but the clerks are helpful). Anything that could be happening is happening somewhere in this city. The street food, public transportation and markets are cheap. Uber, cafes in Condessa and supermarkets are expensive but our dollars go a long way.

Spanish school starts this week.  I have no idea what to expect.

Living Water

We just spent a glorious 3 weeks on vacation together. It's been a while since M has been able to take time off when we are traveling. I think our 2022 bike trip was the last time he was really off from work for a continuous stretch. Our destination was the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, mainly because we have friends there and the provincial park was available and familiar territory as a place to stay. We really made no plans in advance, other than booking an unserviced camping spot. This meant that we had to carefully ration water and electricity as all water had to be hauled in (or as it were, OUT) of the camper and the electricity came from the sun. Mostly we swam in lakes and went to the beach, read books, played cards and built a puzzle. 

It was so quiet at night. Even though many people were staying at this campground, the sites are spread out and sort of separated from each other by dense shrubby forest, so you can't really see anyone else, and people are extremely respectful of quiet hours. We could hear loons and foxes at night. The porcupines in the park were huge! I've actually never seen a live porcupine outside of a zoo and it was funny to come across one waddling through the brush, eating grass and berries. There were a few foxes living near the park and many, many signs warning us not to feed the wildlife. The foxes were not very skittish, sometimes coming right up to your car, so I'm guessing some people have been feeding them. One of the foxes had a very unique coat compared to most red foxes I've seen....this one had brown and black and even some white mixed in with the red. 

One question that came up during the many hours of driving (1,200 miles aka 2,000 km each way!)  was "Why does it feel good to look far?" And you can look far in many directions, across a lake or out to the horizon from the beach. 

The coast in Nova Scotia breathes, drawing wind off the ocean at certain predictable times of the day. The tide in the Bay of Fundy is extreme, dropping 20 or more feet, exposing viscous red mud. When it refills the rivers, it rises as a visible wave moving upstream that people actually ride in small boats for fun. 

I've been swimming almost every day this whole summer, at home it was in a pool, but in Nova Scotia it was what you call wild swimming. Lakes and oceans. The lake we camped at is connected to the ocean, so has a little salinity. This keeps the leeches down, but there are some eels living in it. Now that all my children are pretty competent swimmers, lake swimming is much more fun and relaxing. Our friends have a floating dock in their part of the lake, so you can swim out to it and dive off. One day we all went to the beach and took a surfing lesson, which I was, frankly, terrified to try, but it turned out to be very fun, and felt much less dangerous than I expected. This was partially due to some favorable wave conditions on the day I went. M and Laurel and Marko went back a few days later and the surf was much more challenging. 

Since we didn't have water hookups in our trailer and there were only two showers for the whole campground, I was glad to be in the water so much. We had some debates about whether a lake swim counts as bathing. Certainly ocean swimming and surfing in a rented wetsuit calls for some scrubbing, at least to get the sand out. We noticed that there was a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo sitting near the dock where our friends live, so clearly some consider the lake to be an adequate bathing setting. 

One thing we didn't do was have a campfire. Ironically despite being surrounded by water, the conditions are extremely dry and the fire bans were in full effect, even closing the forest trails to all recreational traffic with a $25,000 fine. Hopefully they will get some rain soon.

While Canadians were universally polite and respectful to us, the news coverage and topics of conversation were often centered around the Trump administration's policies. For the first time I saw widespread pro-Canada flags and signs, and while there was nothing anti-American per se, there was lots of talk of admonishing Americans to do something, as well as a general sense of betrayal.

Beginning Again

I spent most of the summer unpacking and setting up our new house and working on recovering my fitness and strength. The kids have been hanging out with friends, going to the pool a lot, and reading. M has been traveling a ton, working, and running. Max went to an ultimate frisbee camp with his friend and loved it so much. Laurel went to two weeks of CIT camp with the Girl Scouts and also loved it. Marko did not go to a camp but spent a lot of time with his friends and exploring our neighborhood on foot. Many things are going very well for us. 

It's time to launch the new school year! As always, this is a soft start for us, and begins with talking about goals (and yes I count this work as 'school'). I ask the kids what they want to be able to do or know next year at this time, and then we spend a fair amount of time teasing out what it would look like. This year each kid is making a list of books they want to read. We will go Brave Writer style with one book a month, and assign chapters to encourage slow and close reading. I'm hoping to organize book clubs with family and friends for most of the months, to occur virtually as well as in person. There is also a lot of interest in economics so I ordered Kyla Scanlon's book In This Economy, and we will read that together along with her Substack. CrashCourse and Khan academy will also probably occupy a fair amount of our 'school' days. The most exciting thing is that we will be going to Mexico, where we will focus on learning conversational Spanish and Latin American history. Laurel will be using the Help for High School essay writing book from Julie Bogart, and I ordered a book of essays for us to read, Breakfast on Mars and 37 Other Delectable Essays. We are also getting more involved in the Outdoor Serve Guides scouting, which is a great framework for mastering all sorts of practical and civic skills. 

I read two books this summer that had a big impact on me. The first one was Stolen Focus by Johan Hari, which gets into the systemic reasons we all seem to be struggling with attention span these days. The second one was the Five Resets by Aditi Nerukar, which was a basic self-help sort of book, not particularly revelatory, but extremely well organized, at least to my brain. I paged through it in one sitting at the library, then took it home and took notes. I'm just hungry for a little direction right now, I guess. Anyway, I've noticed my attention slipping the last few years. Many of my peers complain about this as well, but  often attribute it to perimenopause or middle age or stress. Many people talk about their kids struggling with attention. My own kids complain about it. We try to exercise and take magnesium supplements or avoid sugar or meditate. But I wondered if it could be the rewiring of my brain in response to notifications on my phone. I deleted Facebook and Instagram, turned off all app notifications, set my phone to dim/sleep mode between 7pm and 7am and blocked Reddit. Now I'm trying out monotasking. I stopped listening to podcasts or audiobooks while I cook or clean. I stopped reading while I eat. And this is going to sound kind of weird, but I stopped thinking while I walk, especially if I was taking a walk because I felt stressed or angry. Instead I started saying a mantra, Yes, yes, thank you, thank you. It astonished me how quickly this simple phrase made me feel better, how disruptive a mantra is to anger or hurt. It's Buddhism 101. But I can feel my attention shifting, my memory improving. Exercising personal control is not the solution exactly. Tech companies, like all corporations, need to be held more accountable for the impact they have on people's health and well being. Lots of money can be made while still putting people first. But personal self control is a lever we can pull right now to reclaim a small part of our brains that have been altered by our environment. 

So I guess I'm also going to bring some mindfulness into homeschooling. Slow things down and lean into deep mastery. Provide lots of opportunities for rest or quiet minds in between work to allow things to simmer and gel. Get off the FOMO train and stop worrying that we're going to fall behind those who say they are doing more. I'm all in on accountability and helping us discern when we truly understand something or know how to do something. Assessment is key for this. But we will have to work on our attention to make this a reality.

Another homeschool year in the books!

I have submitted papers, dotted the i's and crossed the t's for another homeschool year, although I guess technically I homeschooled two and a half kids, instead of three. Max enrolled in a cyber school halfway through the year, and it ended up being a very good experience for all of us. You aren't really totally off the hook as a parent with cyber school, because the kid is still in your house and under your care all day. But it did relieve me of most instructional duties and all curricular decisions.

Laurel and Marko did their usual portfolio routine, where we basically stop school in April and spend a month or more gathering work, reflecting, revisiting unfinished projects...often finishing them with less angst (which is sort of a trick of mine, because they feel like school is over, but I know this part is really integral to their education). This year was complicated somewhat by moving into a new house right in the middle of it, which we did slowly over a month and a half, with very little rhyme or reason other than setting up beds and the kitchen in the new house first. This seemed like a brilliant first step, but actually resulted in us losing interest in the rest of our possessions, because it felt like we had everything we needed. For everything else, we packed a few boxes and threw them in our car every time we were in that end of town. The boxes were pure chaos by the end. Nonetheless, it got done, and hopefully this is the last move for a good, long while. 

Despite the moving chaos, our evaluations with the Dandelion Project were delightful, reflective and rejuvenating. Rock climbing team finished up this week, PALS co-op is done until September, and Laurel is pausing her horse and voice lessons for most of the summer. The older kids are figuring out public transportation from here, and we have discovered our new neighborhood has a public library, weekly farmers' market, extensive woodsy trail system and a public swimming pool. Plus a basketball court which is a block away (far enough that you can't hear the sound of the basketball, but close enough that the kids actually go there all the time and meet up with neighborhood kids and play together). 

I am really excited to be setting up space in our house, we have more rooms than ever. Every kid has their own bedroom, and we have two extra rooms in the basement. Lots of space for projects and hanging out. In many ways, things are going very well for us. 

In less pleasant news, I have been pretty sick this entire year, and have landed in a frustrating liminal space between learning what is wrong and being across the threshold where you treat it. Watch and wait, is what the doctors call it, and it's an actual treatment plan for my diagnosis of smoldering multiple myeloma. Blood tests every 12 weeks, look for trends. The good news is that it may not progress very quickly or at all. The bad news is that it's anyone's guess if you are in that no-worries category or if you have the kind that gnaws your bones to shreds and breaks your kidneys before anything shows up in your bloodwork. I would very much like to avoid the horror of pathologic fractures, thank you very much. In the meantime, I at least got an iron infusion, which did seem to lift the fatigue somewhat, as I had some significant iron deficiency alongside the plasma cell stuff. And yes, I'm getting a second opinion, and forcing myself to go on daily walks and eating lots of anti-inflammatory foods. It seems that if I make it through 2-5 years of no disease progression, I don't have to worry about it too much. I'm honestly pretty cranky about the whole thing, but what can you do, life is strikes and gutters. 

On the schedule for this summer, hopefully a return trip to Nova Scotia to visit friends, Laurel is going to 2 weeks of CIT camp, Max is doing an ultimate frisbee daycamp, Mark is running a race in West Virginia and Marko is playing lots of basketball. I hope to be at the pool a lot, and work in the garden. 

A Deep Dive Into the Sea

Middle School is a delightful time to homeschool. The tweens and young teens in our circle are still very playful and active in the woods and at the playground. They love board games, video games, role playing games, and icebreaker games. They are learning how to cook and take care of younger children and are reasonably trustworthy to go off on their own. 

My middle schooler (currently in the sixth-ish grade) is very independent and ready to stretch his wings. I can trust him to take the bus and arrive at his intended destination. If something goes awry, he is comfortable admitting mistakes and asking others for help. I can send him to the grocery store or other little errands. He works hard at the climbing gym, helps to babysit his cousin every week, and loves going on playdates and sleepovers.

As for studies, middle school, in my opinion, should be all about solidifying your basic math skills, developing literacy and critical thinking skills, starting to write more, and exploring all the different ways there are to learn. This exploration is really fun if you can find an interest to deep dive into. For us, it's been marine biology. I can't remember when this interest began to take hold, but we went on a whale watching tour this summer and that's definitely when he started asking to do more things. We also listened to some of Rachel Carson's books, which contain amazing lyrical descriptions of sea life (highly recommend!) and are very soothing for falling to sleep.  For now he is working on a Harbor and Sprout interdisciplinary unit called Oceanography, a marine biology Coursera, an Outschool class that features two sea creatures a week in a live zoom lecture, and an online watercolor class where he is going to learn to paint realistic pictures of whales. He attended a Smithsonian homeschool lecture on marine life (a scientist was showing how they collect samples of coral to study it) and has checked out a lot of encyclopedia-type books from the library. We watch a lot of nature documentaries. There are frequently relevant articles in the National Geographic magazine subscription we receive. Recently there was a lab in his sister's high school biology course that had to do with population fluctuation. Having a partner made sense for this lab, so he stepped up to join her. There was a card game that modeled population changes, questions to answer in writing and a final project in which they designed a presentation for the imaginary city council of a coastal town. We have been to the zoo and the museum, where exhibits expand on his knowledge of the topic in new and interesting ways.

I don't know if he will actually become a marine biologist, or if this interest will fade in time. But for now, it's an excellent hook. Whereas in elementary I would have been satisfied to watch, read, visit museums, and play, the middle school level is a time to try out different ways of learning and to practice demonstrating what you have learned and what you can do. He now knows that he definitely prefers the kind of class where there is a live lecture from a knowledgeable expert. He has also learned that he can make it through a Coursera or Khan Academy course, but that he probably needs to develop some new study or test taking skills to pass the tests. 

Here are a few potential things to do next...

-Read Playground by Richard Powers and discuss with mom and dad

-Investigate summer camp options, like Sea Camp in Galveston that my cousin recommended

-Go whale watching again! We're hoping to visit Nova Scotia again and there are lots of opportunities for marine life viewing there

-Read some poems or classic literature about the sea

2024

The past few years have been a bit of a roller coaster with big noteworthy events happening, lots of changes, and making do with less than ideal circumstances. But 2024 was kind of hard in a really boring way. I have no terrible tales to tell, just the usual age and relationship related trials that come around in life every so often. Thankfully we also had many good things and scrolling through my photos helped me to really put that in perspective. In 2025 I would like to write more descriptively as things occur, but for now I'm going to be satisfied with capturing a few bullet points. 

• Lots of service projects and camping trips with the Girl Scouts
• Homeschool meet ups, French class at the library with the senior citizens, lots of Outschool classes
• Lunch with my parents and nephew, walks and poetry with my sister
• Pizza and game nights with so many lovely friends and family members 
• A snowy trip to West Virginia to a cabin with a hot tub
• Horses and barn cats and farm dogs, and some more show ribbons for Laurel
• A reunion lunch with our dear former neighbor, Marlene
• Solo trips for me....Oakland CA to visit my friend (and now fellow homeschooling parent!), backpacking the North Country Trail, and a weekend away in Cincinatti where I got to meet Julie Bogart, author of a number of excellent books on home education and the one who planted the seed for our beloved poetry tea times
• Loads of bike rides around town, sizing up bikes so Max has actual gears and comparable tire size to the rest of us, lol
• M too a trip to New York City for work, stayed extra to see museums and fell in love with stand up comedy
• Learning to forge steel at Carrie Furnace for M and I
• Laurel earning her Silver Award 
• Trail running fun with friends, many races, adventure courses and mountains
• Meeting up with friends in the Poconos
• An epic trip to Nova Scotia and reunion with our next door neighbors and best friends
• Loads of swimming, learning to dive (including a heart stopping plunge off the 10m high dive for Marko)
• Loads of rock climbing for the whole family and Max's first competition
• Hosting friends for a week and showing them all of our playgrounds and libraries
• Marko was in a play and a piano recital
• So many board games, video games, games of tag and movie nights
• Cat cuddles and coffee watching the sun come up on the river every single day

Oh Canada - PA to Digby

We finished out a great four weeks, spent mostly in Canada. We spent the first few days visiting with friends in the Poconos. They live in California but have family in Philadelphia so eastern Pennsylvania is often a place we meet up. Those first few days were HOT. Luckily, we have air conditioning in our trailer and we had booked a site with 30 amp hookups. There was a pool at the campground, along with a lot of other kid-friendly attractions. While Leah is one of my best friends, our kids aren't very close and it always feels like a bit of a gamble to see how they'll get along. But of course, they found plenty of fun things to do together, and we ended that portion of our trip with our traditional 2-4-6-8 group cheer and a reflection of our favorite things. Common answers were smores and star gazing. The downside of this location was that it was freaking expensive! Later I learned that there was a NASCAR event in the area, which drove up the prices. Also the bug bites were epic. 

After that we headed up through New England, stopping at two Harvest Host sites. Neither had hook ups, but luckily evening storms cooled things off a little bit, and we spent most of each day driving with AC on. The first Harvest Host was in the driveway of a homeschooling family! The second was in a church parking lot and had a beautiful view of a field of wildflowers. Both were very quiet all night. 

The next day we stopped at a Walmart in Bangor to pick up some supplies and were soon at the border between Maine and Canada. Our vehicle was flagged for a search and we sat at the border for a good hour. Once we got going again we realized we were entering a new time zone and had lost yet another hour. The temperature also started dropping, and fog rolled in from the Bay of Fundy. We were very close to the water, but couldn't see a thing. That night we pulled into a county park that had a campground in Saint John, New Brunswick. We spent the afternoon hiking around the park (the trail system was extensive) and taking hot showers (as it had been three days since we had hookups). 

The next day we didn't have to be at the ferry dock until the afternoon so M went out to run and the kids and I took a hike. Rockwood Park is really a hidden gem and worth a stop. The campground wasn't much more than a gravel lot, but the park itself had several picturesque lakes, an arboretum with lots of signage, swimming beaches and an activity center with fusball and board games. The extensive system of mountain biking/hiking trails is really the park's best asset. It is right in the city of Saint John and just a 10 minute drive to ferry. On the way to the ferry we stopped to the see the Reversing Falls, one of many rivers along the Bay of Fundy that flows backwards with the tides. We loved watching the ducks play in the rapids, and were delighted spot some harbor seals swimming. 

The ferry was a lot of fun. It's very orderly, as are many things in Canada. You check in and they measure your length, and then put you in a lane. When the ferry pulls up, you get to watch all the cars and people unload and then you drive on, lane by lane. The crew is very polite but make sure you get as close as possible to the vehicle in front of you. We transferred our intrepid travel cats into the trailer with some food and water, and went upstairs to the passenger area. Two movie theaters, several snack bar/restaurant areas, and a lot of seating both inside and outside made the two hour trip fly by. We got some snacks and drinks, but spent most of the time sitting gone the deck looking at the bay. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we were enjoying not being hot and sweaty, as we had been on most of the trip. 

When we pulled off the ferry, we were in Digby, Nova Scotia. We camped at the most adorable little campground that had a communal fire pit, full hookups and a coin laundry. The weather was sunny and breezy, but not too hot. The campground was right on a bike path so we could walk into town for dinner. We had lobster, scallops and fish and chips at a restaurant with a view of the water. We were getting used to reading the temperature in Celsius and following the speed limit to the kilometer and keeping track of our loonies for the laundry. There were still quite a few other Americans around and it wasn't too different yet. The biggest change since we had entered Maine was the water. There's water everywhere, rivers and lakes and inlets from the oceans. Every time we crested a hill or came around a corner there was more or different water in front of us. 

The next morning we woke up very early to head to our whale watching tour. If whale watching itself were not exciting enough, we also had plans to meet up with our former next door neighbors, who moved to Canada about the time we moved out of our house. They had never done whale watching either, so we booked tickets on the same cruise. 

That is a tale for another day.

Begin Again

As July kicks off, I am drafting objectives and preparing the required paperwork to declare my intent to homeschool our kids for another year. It's surprisingly emotional for me. Laurel considered a lot of different brick and mortar and online options and is opting to chart her own DIY path through high school. I have every confidence in her ability to create a rich and fulfilling secondary experience for herself. But still, this is starting to feel like a real commitment. (I don't recall signing up to homeschool f o r e v e r.) Last year I made daily requirements...do something from Brave Writer, some math practice, some physical movement, and read and respond to some nonfiction for Social Studies/Science. However, we didn't set aside any time during the day that was for "school," and we tracked our progress more by progression towards goals than butts-in-seats, which is how the state has you do it.  We didn't even really call it school. (Learning is Life, Life is Learning, trying out that unschool-y vibe.)

This year, I'm going to make some more clear divisions around school/work time. In the past, it has been easier to do the same thing with all three kids, merrily moving through our day listening to podcasts and visiting museums, turning on a documentary when we had a question or looking for books at the library. The lines between "school" and "life" were basically nonexistent. This is definitely a great model for kids up to 11 or so, and I think I'd like to preserve this vibe for Max for the next few years. But the older two are getting into projects and pursuits that require a lot more concentrated effort, use of the computer, or time to read and write independently. Plus it was hard to know when it was time to rest if we didn't know when we were at work. We are about to head out on a month long road trip to visit the Maritimes but when we get back, I will schedule out some hours each day

Even if we have a structured schedule, I will remain highly committed to our learner-led vibes. The kids (and M and I!) exercise our freedom to pursue what strikes our fancy, whenever possible. I love our routine of choosing a few big things to work on at the beginning of our year in July, and then revisiting those intentions each month when we plan out what skills we will focus on learning, field trips, classes, documentaries, books, etc. that we will focus on for the month. It is never lost on me what a joy learning is in our household.

So, we begin again, picking up new things to try on and see if they fit, discarding what we are done with. I can't wait to see how this school year unfolds.