2017-2018: nearly mid-year

As I wrote the post title 'nearly mid-year,' I gave myself a mini panic attack. The truth is, I have been struggling with anxiety for awhile now, but this fall, it has been significantly worse. The roots run deep and are varied, but one small piece is that I am homeschooling growing children, time doesn't stand still, and I have been mentally thinking forward toward what is coming next and behind at what we haven't done. The transition between elementary teaching and high school planning has felt, well...short.


We had a full and productive fall, our home learning has been beautiful, and smoother, especially as I embrace our version of Waldorf-inspired at home. You won't see tons of main lesson drawings here, or consistent form drawing, but you will see lots of stories, art and creativity, singing, and movement. Our Us-schooling makes for a happier, motley mix of activities, using a motley mix of resources.

I wish I had carved out more time to blog learning period-by-learning period again this year, as I did last year. (Our homeschool charter uses learning periods that cover 2 months at a time, and last year I blogged about what we had done each of those learning periods before moving into the next period.) We have done so much! I didn't capture it that way, though. So...here are some things we have done since my last post update.

We spent a lot of time on math and science during late autumn. The kids wanted to participate in our homeschool group's math and science fair and quickly chose to work together on a project about fire. Fire has been fresh in their minds and relevant to them as their Grannie was evacuated from the intense and destructive fires in Northern California. We also explored Mystery Science activities and Lala Bug's weekly math class meant that we were all playing with math very consistently.

One of our consistent anchors has been a weekly nature study or exploration. We have one spot we visit regularly, but we happily take detours when something seasonally magical comes our way, like over-wintering ladybugs or a super (Wolf) moon and spring tides with an  >8 foot change between high and low tides. When not pulled by unique events, we explored fungus, lichen, moss, winter solstice, and more.

The holidays flew by. We took a break from our main lessons during part of December. It was much needed, but the grounding feeling of rhythm has been missed, and so we made a slow re-entry last week and dive back into year-long and into new activities this week. I am taking some deep breaths as transitions are always a little hard....

Happy learning and living to you all!