A Week, Briefly (Summer is not over)

Last August I was not ready for school to start, but I did it anyway because I thought I should.

And in September I had mental health crisis of the most serious kind.

This August I am not ready for school to start.

And I'm honoring that.

However, I am ready to document brief moments of the beautiful learning that my kids engage in when I'm not running school.

This week Rose Red is in Florida at a surfing camp.  She's with a sweet friend.  I could not be happier for her to have this experience away from home, at the beach, out-of-doors, physically active, and just plain cool.

As far as I'm concerned, this is a quarter of a credit of P.E.

The rest of us are at home.  My teens are reveling in their last days of bizarre teen sleeping schedules before early morning seminary begins next week.

Pixie has been working on memorizing the dances she's choreographed for our dance team.  She'll be teaching the 10-12 year olds and dancing with the 12-17 year olds.  She's already earned 30-ish hours of credit toward her 120 hours needed for a full internship credit.

Super Star is kind of a zombie.  She needs more direction than she's getting.  Her thyroid meds are not balanced, though, so her zombie-ness might be more medical than teen attitude.  She works out a lot using Jillian Michaels videos and at-home workout regimens she finds on Pinterest.  She's also been reading books about nutrition; she asked me to buy kale the next time I'm at the grocery store.

Belle reads.

And takes care of Theo.

But mostly she reads and reads and reads.

It's fluffy stuff--teen romance, adventure, fantasy--but I read most of the books she's reading, and we've had some sweet conversations about the themes and various plot developments.

She'll be assigned some meatier stuff in the school year ahead.

As for my littles, I think pictures speak louder than words about learning through play:

"I made it!"

She built this fort that is still up after 2 enormous rain storms!

Daddy worked 3 days in a row which means the littles didn't see him for those 3 days.  The very first morning he was home, I found him like this, diving right into being Daddy again.  Oh, how happy those little boys were to see him!

Little Princess is a champ at catching and releasing damselflies!

Little Brother spends some time sanding blocks of wood for a project for me.

Mister Man found some throw away pieces of wood leftover from one of Sir Walter Scott's building projects.  But they look like wheels!  So Mister Man set to work . . .

Nature Angel built a campsite in the driveway for the toddlers

Cool!  A cicada shell!

Little Princess helps Mister Man attach his sanded wheels to the body of the car.

Happy boy with his homemade wooden car!

Belatedly adding a coat of polycrylic to the mud table to protect it from constant water contact.

Our sand pit has been in near-constant use.

Quiet time at the end of the long outdoor days

Mud body art has been the favorite activity of the week.

Tired Super Star on a lazy afternoon

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On Wednesday we began working with our new chore system.  I'm not sure it will work, but we're certainly trying, and our old one was dying, so some updating was sorely needed.

Pixie, Super Star, and Belle also asked me to pass out their school stuff so they could get started on their independent work.  I spent a couple of hours pulling books off the shelves, passing out composition books, paper, and notebook dividers, and making study lists for each girl.

Nature Angel and Little Princess are crazy jealous with wanting to get started, so I'll have to get really organized for them, too.

I'm close.

Really close.

But I'm caught up working on exploring the whole place-based education idea, and we have so much rich stuff to study right outside our own door.

Then came Friday.

Rose Red was still in Florida.
Pixie had to work.
Super Star was kind of under the weather.
Belle was loath to leave Theo all day.

So Sir Walter Scott and I took the middles and littles to the lake for the day.

She was ready to get in the water, but some birds flew overhead and caught her attention.  She paused to watch.  Later in the day we all watched a pair of herons fly over the water then pause to fish then fly again.  Graceful is an understatement.

After the first swim.

Mister Man's collection of treasures

Baymax chowed down on the homemade brownies we had for dessert.

Ladybug is a lover of heat.  The sand was wickedly hot, but after lunch, she nestled down into it as if she were on a heavenly cloud.

Heading off to explore the jetty

Everyone spent lots of energy balancing and climbing.

Chunking rocks.  The bigger the better!

The girls tried to figure out how to skip rocks.

The whole beach was ours!

Beowulf holds a dead crawdad in his hand.  It took significant courage to touch it.

Nature Angel's lake treasures--a fossil, a shell, and a crawdad skeleton

Heading back up the jetty to the beach for another swim when the sun grew too hot for comfort on the rocks.

"Mom!  It looks just like a fish!"  And it did, in person.  It's harder to see here. :)

In addition to the herons, we observed killdeers, a flock of geese, 3 types of butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies, minnows, and swallows.

We had a day of infinite sand, sun, water, and joy.

I'm so grateful that summer is not over.


(linking here)