This week the girls are taking a biology camp.  No, it wasn’t exactly their choice.  But it’s a really wonderful opportunity for them to dissect things that need dissecting, to learn how to create lab reports and how to document their findings and to have a reminder of how to use a microscope accurately.  These are areas that perhaps I have not emphasized enough at home.  Or, you know, at all, when it comes to dissecting.  I mean, they took another dissection lab earlier this year too so I make sure it’s covered, but I like to have alternate teachers besides myself cover these specific requirements.  Because, well, it’s gross.

Thankfully, despite their distaste for having “school” during summer break, they are both finding the class engaging and interesting.  Thank goodness for enthusiastic and talented teachers in their specific fields of expertise.  I am so grateful for that.

 

 

Sometimes I think about what our family’s life would look like if the kids were in a more traditional school environment.  (Yes, every single home school parent has had these same thoughts.)  And weeks like this I am reminded that even though I would, in theory, have more time, my time would still be quite divided.  The amount of time just this week (and gas, oh please let’s not even talk about the gas in my gargantuan vehicle) that I am spending in the shuffling to and fro makes me feel crazy.  Get up.  Drive twenty minutes.  Drop off.  Drive home twenty minutes.  Do a tiny amount of work.  Basically get started on a project only to finally gain some momentum to hear a child remind you, “We need to go pick up the girls.”  Drive twenty minutes.  Pick up girls.  Drive home twenty minutes.  All worth while.  All part of my job description. But all so not only time consuming, but time deconstructing.  When my day is that divided into segments, I have a hard time getting anything large accomplished.  I’ll do small jobs – sure.  Squeeze in a load of laundry and throw up a couple of posts for Travelers Rest Here.  Respond to a handful of emails and pay a couple of bills.  But what about the time for the bigger looming assignments?  That article that I should have written about the dairy farm from last month?  (Or was it two months ago?)  My reviews of our travel spots that I have been contracted to write?  The giant home cleaning task that is our Family Closet.  Those are multiple hour long tasks and stopping and starting them just isn’t how I roll.

I’ve struggled this week to maintain the balance.  To fit all the Big Things in the the tiny leftover space between driving back and forth.

But I’m refusing to become a slave to the stress of it all.

It will get done.  Or it won’t.  

 

 

One of my focuses this week was to complete my curriculum and my plan for the Writing and Literature class I will be teaching next year at Meadowlark Collective.  I’ve been by turns thrilled, excited and nervous about this gigantic undertaking of beginning a homeschool co op next year with several friends.  In some ways, it is all completely overwhelming.  And in some other ways, it is as if those of us on the Board of Directors (we sound so fancy, right?) have been moving toward this very thing for years and years.  Today all of the teachers gathered and presented their big picture plans for the year and the smaller details of how that will all work out in each classroom.  I couldn’t attend each of the meetings, all that driving back and forth you know.  But the ones I did attend – wow!  I was just so encouraged to see the potential we have for next year.

I have loved homeschooling on so many levels and for so many reasons.  But because of my particular life circumstances I knew this next year had to shift in some major ways.  That is both exciting and painful.  But to hear the planning and passion, the skill and enthusiasm, that the teachers have for what they’ll be teaching my kids next year – the fears and the sadness are jumping in the backseat and I am leaning into the grateful and thankful for what lies ahead.  I really think this small Collective is a lovely little chance to be what we seldom get – in life or in homeschool.  The best of both worlds.  Certain classes will be completely lifted from my shoulders.  And yet I still get to be home with my kids most days of the week.  Skilled instructors are creating quality curriculum to walk my kids through and I just have to drop them off at the door and follow up during the week.  That’s some kind of wonderful, I’m telling you.  (This was not intended to be a pitch, I promise – but if you’re local and you’re homeschooling, you should really think about this.  I think it will be a breath of fresh air in your routine.)

 

 

Tomorrow I’ll be driving here and there, tucking in a meeting for TRH, maybe cleaning the house and coercing the kids into making dinner.  (It’s supposed to be home made pizzas but that requires planning ahead for rising dough and the only cheese in our house is cheddar.)  Some of my to-do list will get conquered.  Some will be left hanging.  I’ll think about bullet journals (who loves theirs?) and a couple of dear friends who are going through a steady season of hard.  I’ll try to be on time and I’ll probably be listening to Chris Stapleton because I’ve decided I’m obsessed with his album Traveller.  Maybe I’ll put my suitcase away from our CO trip.  I’m definitely letting the kids eat cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch.  I’m right proud of myself for remembering to cancel our trial of Hulu Plus that I used to watch the World Cup for a week.  And – since when did Amazon Prime increase their yearly cost?

 

 

____________________________________