Sometimes I am searching for  the light in the middle of the homeschool year. Did you ever feel that way?  There is a saying that every homeschooling family is ready to quit in February, so maybe this feeling that homeschooling is a hard juggle is just starting early. What usually  happens is that  by the end of the year I will be saying, “Oh well, it wasn’t really SO bad!”.  I told a friend that other day that maybe homeschooling is a little like childbirth, and we forget the painful parts, which is why we come back for the next year! Hahahaha!

So, at this time of year, at least for me, we just have to  press on.  I have to keep myself going because the end of the year is not that far away, and I realize particularly for our high schooler, we may have to extend a little past the date where we normally end even with pressing on.

So,  in order to conquer the midyear feels, I have been busy bringing in light into our homeschool in various forms.  I have done this with physical forms of  light in our home – candles and salt lamps; through crafts that make our space feel cheery.  I have done this with emotional things that give us light.  For example, this month we have focused on courtesy and kind speech and loyalty through a variety of stories and biographies and our Christian faith.  That feels nice. We try to get out to walk everyday for a very physical dose of light as well.   We have been at the horse farm and the children have been playing outside with our puppy.  I have streamlined errands as much as possible and made rest, exercise, rhythm, and cleanliness a priority.

For those of you Waldorf  homeschooling and wondering where we are these days, our first grader is on his second math block of the year. He is going over all four math processes, and starting to work on math facts involving the numbers 1-20, the multiplication tables, patterns and estimating and more.  Math is easy for him.  He is also working on all his letter sounds (for those of you not Waldorf homeschooling, we introduce academics in first grade, not kindergarten, for a variety of reasons), short vowels and consonant-vowel-consonant words and we are doing a lot of modeling in this block.

Our sixth grader has completed Astronomy, Mineralogy, European Geography, and we are finishing up Rome this week and moving into a math block next week.  She has daily practice in math, grammar, spelling, and is working on Latin a few times a week.  She is working a lot on black and white drawing also during this block.

Our oldest child is a ninth grader.  Biology is the one subject that has been consistently hard for her, and we switched tactics partway through the first semester so we are still catching up.  She has recently been studying and writing about, “The House of the Scorpion, ” and the poetry of Mary Oliver ( from Oak Meadow’s freshman year literature and composition suggestions), along with Biology, Spanish II, and Algebra I.  She has been creating her own business making horse-related products to sell.

So, it isn’t perfect, but it is moving!  Throw some of your light over here and tell me how your homeschooling is going!

Love,
Carrie