I am never able to pinpoint that exact thing that triggers it. Women are cyclical creatures by nature and eclectic homeschooling mothers are no exception to this phenomenon. The August heat rolls into southeast Texas, superstores set out four foot tall cardboard bins of pencils, crayons, glue sticks and composition books with tantalizing prices, museum after museum fills email inboxes with homeschool class schedules and registration details….
And somewhere amongst these myriad subtle shifts further and further away from summertime, we all suddenly, desperately clutch our planners (paper or electronic) and go absolutely crazy. I penciled in activities for June 2011 today. I might have gone as far as July except for the fact that my planner lacks pages past June 2011. July 2011 does not yet exist in my universe. June is bad enough. This recurring phase of a homeschooling mother’s annual cycle is a giant part of why I have this nasty habit of laughing maniacally in the face of the poor, sweetly ignorant individual who accidentally lets loose with, “But what about socialization?” What they ought to be asking me is “How do you decide which outside activities and group opportunities to pass by in order to be sure you get at least a little bit of actual school work done in a year?”
[Here is where I acknowledge that many non-school educating families, commonly known by that word that totally freaks people, especially ABC News anchors, out-- Unschoolers-- would laugh maniacally themselves at the delusional thought of needing to do any "school work" at all. I know oodles of very cool unschooling parents and children. They still love me despite my need to hang onto that very delusion they eschew. So you should to.]
It is truly a problem. This year I am standing strong. As I discussed previously we’re going to do this insane thing called “stay home” on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, starting in late August. I’ve had to give up a few things to make this happen. We shifted Girl Scouts to a different day, which thankfully seems to be better for all our troop’s families. We wont be seen much at all anymore at our previous Tuesday playgroup. Thankfully, we see a lot of those folks at our homeschool co-op on Thursdays. And we’re even going to skip signing up for the art museum’s fantastic homeschool workshops this year. That last one was hard for me. The museum puts on a really great program. But it’s a popular program as well and will most likely still be available in the years to come. Meanwhile, we need three days in a row to really work. Even with those three days blocked out, there is plenty on the calendar. As a matter of fact, if you haven’t spoken with me yet, don’t even think of trying to schedule anything with me in October. October is booked solid. You missed your window.
Our homeschool co-op just held our autumn planning session. We are now all working to polish September plans to explore Native American art, crafts, storytelling, history and culture via a unit study and two very different museum trips. We’re also plotting an October embrace of our Inner Pirates by using math, science and critical thinking skills to hunt for buried treasure, checking out a museum exhibit about real pirates, touring an actual nineteenth century ship and spending a day with Jim Hawkins and Captain Flint. We’ll top off the autumn session with a November study of Cycles in Nature which will include outdoor adventures at a nature sanctuary, a trip to a weather museum, clouds in a bottle and creatures eating other creatures.
History Club was already planned out through December because the woman who organizes it is a Super Genius Planner/Organizer. She also made sure the two of us got our Girl Scout troop’s schedule crafted from September to May and that we now possess a solid schedule between the two of us to manage produce co-op pick ups once a month through December. See? I wasn’t kidding about that Super Genius thing. I’d wager July 2011 already exists in her incredibly orderly and disciplined universe. She’s just plain cool like that. Art co-op is also almost completely locked in for at least the autumn semester.
Meanwhile, the dates keep coming and the pencil keeps flying and the autumn and winter weekends are even filling up. I’m pulling together this kooky idea I had to get together with just a handful of other families once a month in order to knock out a lot of physics experiments in one large chunk, followed by food. Because, if you know anything about homeschoolers- or at least my kind of homeschoolers- there is always food involved and usually lots of it. This little venture got almost immediate buy-in from those I solicited and will be oh, so creatively named…… Family Physics. The idea is that we read materials about that month’s four concepts at home. Each family is responsible for providing one to two experiments or hands-on activities to reinforce one concept. The kids can then rotate through the activities together, having a grand old time getting science-y. After which, we will use that most ancient of communal meal rituals, the pot luck, to accomplish assuaging their ferocious appetites for both knowledge and sustenance. And to socialize them. (Can you hear my maniacal laughter from there?) It should be fun. At least that’s the goal. Since we’re doing this on weekend dates, I’m excited for a few of the fathers to have an opportunity to roll up their sleeves and get into the mix themselves if they’d like.
Beyond that, there is no shortage of other adventures scribbled in various blocks of my no longer pristine planner pages. Birthday parties galore, since we somehow befriended lots and lots of folks who like to “snuggle” through the late winter months. A possible trip to Caddo Mounds for their 2010 Caddo Culture Day, Last Organic Outpost’s green festival, Texas A&M’s Chemistry Open House for families, a camping trip, the Trader’s Village Pow Wow, and maybe the Houston Symphony.
With the calendar almost totally complete, I’m hopeful that I’ll get my lesson planning done soon as well. My goal is to finish it before I head out to California for a week of blissful nurturing of one of my oldest friends, her fiance and her brand new son. This would be a good thing since I’ve hypothetically determined August 23rd to be the first day of the next school year. Whatever that means. (Can you hear the unschoolers’ maniacal laughter now?) My goal is also to return to both the Weekly Update posts and the Secular Thursday posts once that date comes to pass. Apparently, planning hyperdrive also extends into the blogosphere.
