Soft Launch on a New School Year

"School" starts July 1 for us, and by start, it means we file some papers with our local district and begin logging our activities. Max is joining the official roster this year as he is now at the age where school is compulsory. Our homeschool style has largely become to follow interests, with lots of backwards documenting on my part, and a healthy sprinkle of word study and arithmetic to fill in gaps and promote strong literacy and math skills for everybody.

Max and Marko just finished the Phantom Tollbooth with M and loved taking the quizzes on the SparkNotes website. Max is working on math in Khan Academy, reading lots of Cat Kid and Dogman and learning to ride his bicycle safely in a group and on the street. He is really into making paper airplanes and does a lot of age-appropriate creative writing....lists and plans and notes to us. As long as he keeps writing on his own and shows improvement with spelling and handwriting, I will not do any formal curriculum in that subject. 

Marko is at tree camp this week and doing lots of interesting things like working in the tree nursery and setting bait on wildlife cameras. He reports that they have to write things down in a little notebook they were give, so I'm hoping that will come home and I can do some additional writing with him about that experience. He's getting a lot better at swimming in deep water and diving and holding his breath. Organizing gaming time with his friends, both virtually and IRL, is a priority for him. He reads a lot. Of all the kids, he is the least enthusiastic about anything school-ish, but I'm finding if I observe him, I can see lots of ways that he is developing math and vocabulary skills. He's also very intuitive about geography.

Laurel is starting 7th grade and working on her sixth grade math book to keep preparing for pre-algebra and higher level math. When she feels like she is ready, we will enroll her in some kind of accredited algebra class. This might not be for six months or a year. She writes a lot for fun, and enjoys meeting monthly with her aunts in a virtual book club. She is currently working on building a list of literature to read through with them this year. We will use some Brave Writer Arrow guides as well as Core Knowledge Series assignments and prompts, and maybe some Spark Notes. Some of the titles I'm excited about include Atlas of the Heart, The Nerviest Girl in the World and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She started riding horses again and is working on jumping at a canter. 

M is ramping up at a new job, doing a ton of house painting and other home maintenance things, and learning to build circuits from scratch. I'm working on a Coursera course on UX Design, and recently completed my safety certificate in flat water boating for Girl Scouts. Now I can take the scouts out on a lake in kayaks or paddle boards without having to hire a guide. 

As a family, we're working on planning together more. As the kids get older it's easy to just go off in a million different directions and get busier and busier without really having a purpose behind our activities. FOMO is a strong force, and there are many things competing for your attention these days. We know that having rest days built in and lots of "margins" between social situations is key for our health and happiness. "Lovingly holding each other accountable" has become a catch phrase. Writing things down a marker board helps us to 1) set a reasonable number of action items in a day and 2) finish what we started out intending to do.