Hello my sweet friend

It’s been too long.. so sorry my sweet friends. My girls and I ended up sorta extending-ish our deschooling journey... summer has been relaxing, stressful, easy, hard, educational, informative and so much more - and its only about 1/2 over!! We’ve had some personal ups and downs... starting with all our vacations being cancelled due to Covid, then I received some pretty terrible news about a friend, then I was in a car accident!
so yah, back to the beginning ... I started this summer with the need to do “school”. I felt the need to work all our brains. So I thought, let’s do this! I started off strong and determined... but it felt confusing and disjointed. Why, well. it was my first go round at working 1:1 with each kiddo... it felt nice to spend time with them individually, but it also meant our day took longer to get going- so that was a mental shift I wasn’t totally prepared for. 2ndly my girls have this AMAZING tutor, Miss M. She has been working with Big Love since lockdown (virtually). She now comes to the house, they sit outside she with a mask on- across from each other and both my girls work with her 2x a week independently. I have her b/c big love needs some real help. Her tool bag (as miss M. likes to say) was pretty empty ... she had zero tools that worked for her to help with math, spelling, and some additional reading skills... and Bear, well, Being only in K is a blank slate. She needs to learn what + or - sign is.. how to build on her already growing reading skills, and more...and frankly, she just wanted miss m. To work with her too - so I said yes! So yah... it was kinda confusing. My girls did 2x a week with miss m. Then 2x a week with me...it was just turning into a hot mess express 🥴. So I put my work on hold and decided to get these FUN-SCHOOLING journals. Miss M. And I felt the girls should do some writing to help keep up the spelling skills and the journals have been awesome for that! Funny thing, I had bought some before - totally didn’t get it and gave them away 🤦🏼‍♀️ - oh well, live and learn. This time around I joined the Facebook group and really got a better understanding — a BIG HELPFUL TIP- JOIN THE DANG GROUPS! Join all the freakin groups you can find if you are even remotely interested in a schooling method, book, resale, location, all of the above. I have found this sooooo helpful! And you know what - when I realize a style or group isn’t for me...I remove myself from it! No harm no fowl. So yah, I bought 2 journals 1 for each girl - they are language arts inspired, super low key, age appropriate (since they are open ended!) and get them thinking!

In addition to all this crazy personal stuff, my semi-failed attempt to “summer school” my kids 😬, my brain kept returning to the concept of unschooling. A dear friend who also in light of Covid has decided to homeschool and diving right into the methodology and schooling belief of unschooling- which is a homeschooling style/belief that is complete child-led learning. It involves teaching your kids through their interests, through life experience and exploration rather then with a curriculum. I have ALWAYS been drawn to this idea as a general concept. I struggle a bit with the idea of letting my kids take complete control - but I do believe that learning really does happen the most and most effectively when it is done organically and with sincere interest. There have been MANY studies that show how we retain information when we are interested in it rather then just reading it in a text book... this concept is not limited by age. You might be thinking, ell if they aren’t being exposed to it, then they won’t know they have an interest in it... yes and no. Learning can take place and can evolve from anywhere- think about it... your kids watch a show - say octonots - and learn about narwhals - that leads you to the library for books, YouTube for videos, artwork creating sea creatures, it turns into a love for ocean life, it becomes a trip to the aquarium, maybe a scheduled private tour in a boat to learn about something else, and so on... how freakin cool and soooo much more informative and in-depth then a paragraph in a book at a desk in school. This could go on and on.
so I guess where I’m going with all this is that - I’m still finding my way... my girls are really happy. I’m really happy with how they are learning right now. We are grateful we have miss m. She currently takes away my fears and worries about the math/spelling/reading - I love the simplicity of the fun-schooling... per my girls request we purchased a smoothie journal- which includes math and writing and recipes - which they love... and all the rest is just coming together through books and shows and art and conversation. Our kids are WAAAAAAYYYYY smarter then we give them credit for and they have so much to say - if we take a moment to listen. It’s kinda awesome.