I seem to be in wind down mode.  Even though we are planning to do some lessons throughout the summer, I am hoping that we will have time to do other things--gardening, organizing in the house, decluttering and whatnot.

Getting off on a side-track for a minute:  I am having a problem with the word "school".  While we have a more structured curriculum and schedule than some, I am trying not to re-create school at home--at least not school in the traditional sense.  In many ways, I think I tutor my children rather than teach as you would a class.  We are not a school.  I am not an unschooler either, at least not in the way that I let my children direct their studies.  I direct their studies at this point, and I plan to at least until high school.  I am happier with the idea of home-education rather than home-schooling.  Perhaps it is just semantics, but I wish there were a better word to describe homeschoolers.  Does anyone else feel the same way?

Back to the summer study idea.  Belle is at week 23 in her Sonlight Core, and at week 14 in the readers.  Our read alouds are keeping up with the core.  What I am thinking of doing is stopping the core when we finish our current read-aloud, and keeping on with the readers over the summer.  That way she will have a chance to get caught up to her core week (maybe not quite, but that is all right), and then we will be able to finish the core and readers sometime in the Fall.  Hopefully by then, I will be able to afford the next core.  The added benefit is that with continued reading practice, hopefully it will become easier for her to read.

In math, she is working through Math U See Alpha.  A lot of that is review for her, and I think we will just plan to continue math right through the summer.  Twenty or so minutes a day should not be too much.

I haven't decided how long to continue science.  We are enjoying the Astronomy book very much, but I will probably take a few weeks break from science.

I will plan to break from everything when the children are in swimming lessons.  That will be a two week period sometime in July.

My difficulty is with Boo.  He is so quick, and he loves school.  He is already almost 30 lessons into his grade one curriculum, and he doesn't want to stop.  Saxon is pretty me-intensive, both in preparation and teaching.  I'm not really looking forward to doing that all summer, but I don't know what else to do.  It takes only about an hour to do both math and phonics with him, but it can take up to 30 minutes to prep at night.

It looks like if I continue with both math and phonics with Boo, and reading--which takes him very little time--and with math and reading with Belle, I will be looking at about 1 1/2 hours of school (my time) a day--an hour each for the kids.  I think I could cope with that--if we get an early enough start in the morning, so that I still have most of the day to do summer jobs--those things I never have time to do during the year.

If I don't manage to do a reasonable amount during the summer, it will really be tough to keep up during the year.  We have our vacation planned for October--a trip home to Scotland.

This is a really long and probably boring post--really just getting my thoughts down so I can plan.  On a completely different subject, I re-arranged my kitchen counter today.  I like it now.  I have more room to prep food and bake, and I don't think the counter looks as cluttered.