I've always wanted to live a slow life...slow...It has not been until recently in my life that I have been able to accomplish that. I got to get off the merry go round of school, most sports, after school activities, pta meetings, volunteering (or feeling obligated to) at school...WHY did I spend so much time cutting out premade thoughtless crafts or even worse, RUNNING OF WORKSHEETS, MINDLESS WORKSHEETS, for my kids teachers???? I'll tell you, if you have ever had an inkling, a passing thought of homeschooling your children, DO IT, just do it-there is not a very great chance you will regret it. Even though it is "summer", we keep on trekking along. We are not bound by the almighty calendar, rather our desires.
One thing that I learned, during MY de-schooling time, is that I should not, and will not structure my childrens time what-so-ever. It is by pare nts structuring their childrens time, planning activites for them to do, that when they do have some free time, THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO! because we have always planned for them! Duh! I stopped it-No summer camps, no swim lessons, no sports camps, no planned play dates, none of it. What is the result? Kids that have the kind of summers that we used to as children. Remember those summers? Those blissful, long hot summers that you spent having popsicles in the yard? Playing tag, or hide and go seek? Reading? Remember reading? This is the beautiful gift I have given myself and my children...FREE, UNSTRUCTURED TIME. This is NOT tv or computer time-we unplug (cept for blogging) from 8am to 8pm. House rules, you can watch tv till your eyes fall out between 8:01 pm and 7:59 am. Know what's funny? They don't! Now we do have a "marble" system in place where you can use your marbles to buy 15min slots on the computer if you think you are going to die if you don't post on facebook, and I think some have figured out how to do it via the phone...Once the tv, or idiot box, is off, their imaginations are free to take off. So what do we do? Glad you asked!
Yesterday we:
-Sat outside in the cool morning air and read books on the sun porch...classical music in the background and drank fresh squeezed orange juice (NOT from a juicer-even slower, one of those little glass jobs with the little bumpy thing in the middle, even had to fish out our own seeds)
-rode bikes and scooters with neighbor kids
-made homemade American Girl doll furniture
-played playmobil for a really long time, house and water zoo
-ate a picnic lunch out on the sun porch while we played "trash" with the cards
-made homemade popsicles (white grape juice with cut up grapes and greek yogurt with honey and mango)
-made muffins and baby quiches for breakfast this am
-made mudpies in our mudpie kitchen, and opened our own bakery "The Mudmuderie"
-decided to make our own festival complete with money (leaves) tickets(rocks) rides:
The scream machine-you get tied up in a lawn chair and leaned way back and then released, laughing hysterically all the while
The roller coaster-a shaky, unpredictable ride down our big hill in the well loved tonka truck
The teeter totter of death-pretty self explanatory!
The Scrambler-wildness on the tire swing
The neighbor girls even made a cardboard box with a hole cut out for her face so you could throw wet soaking rags at her!
Then you could use your tickets to purchase a yummy homemade popsicle, or two, or three...
-Finally dinner on the porch, together
-and for some reason, why not?, dominic and gretchen hand washing the storage shed, soap and hose included of course!
-We wrapped up the night by reading aloud, with much hilarity, the book of immaturity 2
S-L-O-W, just like I like it...slow
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