Happy June! We're completing the shift over to our summer way of being, today. In my head, I just refer to it as our summer semester, because that's just the way I see the world. Growing up, my sister and I would make ourselves Daily Plan lists most summer days -- making sure we got in everything we wanted to -- and I think of this as a version of that. There are all these cool things to do and learn and see, each summer. If we don't maintain some sort of basic structure, we wind up missing out on so much, because the days just drift on by! (I suspect this is similar to the reason I like having all my stuff *out* instead of packed neatly away in shelves and drawers -- if it's not out where I can see it, I forget it's even there)

We've shifted our solo time (when I've got unfettered computer time and she's got free run of the TV) until after we play school -- it used to be first thing in the morning, but it was too easy to just drift until half the day was gone, that way. We've also restructured our playschool part of the day, a little, and made our practice work a more consistent part of the day. Sarah has a very low tolerance for frustration, and while it bothers her that she isn't better at writing or spelling or certain types of drawing, she's refused any offers or suggestions I've made to work on those skills. I've gone back and forth over it, but I think learning to push past frustration is too important a skill, I don't think it's serving her well for me to let this go. So I've asked her to pick one of those skills every day, and spend 15 minutes on them. At the same time, I'll be spending 15 minutes working on a skill that frustrates me (probably songwriting or learning how to create harmonies -- it's so very frustrating that those don't come more easily to me).

Our focus, this summer, is life skills (for Sarah: cooking, gardening, making change, bike riding, etc. For me: basic woodworking, gardening, home repair, time management, music skills, budgeting skills), although we're still picking a theme every month. We've also each designed a badge for ourselves to work on -- mine is a music badge, hers is a bravery badge (she gave me permission to talk to my mom-friends about this, but asked me not to discuss it with any of her friends). And, honestly, we'll still have the usual basic curriculum going on in the background.

I realized that, while I don't separate these things out from "real life" all that often, and I don't make a big deal about it to Sarah, I actually do have a curriculum for her. It was reading Guerrilla Learning, recently, that brought it to my conscious attention. The author writes about learning in context, arguing that that's one of the greatest strengths of homeschooling. I started thinking about the context of our home life, our local environment, the activities and ideas that run constantly in the background because of my interests or Joe's interests, and started noticing patterns. Out of curiosity I made a list, just to see what our unwritten curriculum would look like, written down:

* earth science and life science (gardening, nature journals, hudson river ecosystem, environmental activism, health, nutrition)
* history/geography/polisci (current events, early US history, our family history, NY history, biographies, history of science, political activism)
* world culture (folktales, mythology, comparative religion, nutritional anthropology, world folk music)
* communication (philosophy, great books discussions, family magazine, short stories, writing comic books, family meetings)
* math (constant board games and logic puzzles running in the background, aside from Sarah's personal interest in math)

I think I like our curriculum. I think I'm okay with making it an intentional choice, making a conscious effort to bring in more activities that tie into the subjects we're already "studying".