Term 2: Here We Go!

Well, here we go.  Study time is upon us again.  We have enjoyed a few weeks of R&R and natural learning opporunities.  Another Family Adventure of camping, exploring and watersports.  Painting our house.  Playing music.  Planting our Autumn kitchen garden. Climbing trees.  And welcoming some new additions to our home - namely some new baby chickens.  One of these days I might just get around to sharing some pictures with you of these adventures.  But for now, we are busy settling in to our regular daily rythms of housekeeping, study and our regular homeschooling and church activities.

I must admit, over the past few weeks I have been feeling a bit worn out and uninspired (even though we managed to do some great things over our break!).  Our new busier lifestyle does wear on me, and it is quite a skill, and an art, to manage busyness in a manner that is fullfilling, and enjoyable, while maintaining pockets of rest to keep those fires of enthusiasm stoked and family relationships growing and loving.  And of course, I had also caught the flu that is going around, which did not help.

The past few days I have been re-reading 'Pocketful of Pinecones' by Karen Andreola.  The book opens with this:

This book is dedicated to my fellow homeschool mother.  She has taken the step, with her husband and children, to live the life she has imagined.

Follow this link, to read my book review of this story.  I had never taken the time to read this dedication before (amazing, when I have had this book for 10 years!).  I was captured by the last phrase 'to live the life she has imagined'.

When I began homeschooling, I had a picture in my mind of the kind of life our family could live together.  The story, and picture, presented in Pocketful of Pinecones, comes pretty close to what I imagined for my own family.  Whenever I read this story, I am encouraged again to remember what kind of life I hoped homeschooling would give to my family, and I am encouraged to re-evaluate where we are today as a family.  To think through our choices for study, curriculum, time and hobbies and how we manage our weekly schedule.  This time I am challenged to bring that ideal into play in amongst our current busy activity.  And this is my goal for this term.  To recreate that sense of family time, of exploration, wonder and interest in pockets amongst our music lessons, church and work commitments and our always expanding circle of friends.  My second goal for this term is to manage all this activity in a neater manner.

Lady in White Reading
Emilie Caroline Mundt

I don't know how you work, but I tend to work messy.  I clean up at the end, but the process is messy, and disorganised.  And it would appear now that I have passed that habit on to my children.  This is not a problem when life is quieter, but when life is busier and a little more complicated, and we are co-ordinating the activities of 5 different people in one home, working messy begins to create some problems.

Not exactly academic goals for Term 2 this year, but important none-the-less.  Our curriculum and study is moving along  nicely, so no real changes are planned there.  Just the aspects of atmosphere - maintain organised and tidy habits and to create time to develop our sense of family time, exploration and activity with a feeling of gentle pace, with pockets of rest and reconnection.

Here We Go!