Have you missed me?

A shot from LAST fall ... I'm craving fall, are you?

Man. I sure have been quiet lately.

Life has gone on ~ we've been reading and playing and getting things done. We've played games and played with friends. We've been to the library a zillion times. We've seen a Wizard of Oz play. We've ridden bikes, been to the beach, the usual. We finished The Wise Enchanter and started reading My Father's Dragon at night.

Life has gone on, I just haven't been too inspired to write about it. I'm sorry about that folks.

My guess is that my brain has been overloaded with thoughts and ideas about school and until those thoughts and ideas felt "ironed out", I wasn't in the mood to share.

As you may know, we have a BIG trip scheduled in exactly one month. We will not return until the end of September and I plan to start our school year when we return, so I'm feeling the pressure to get every little detail worked out before we go.

But, I'm having a really hard time with that for some reason.

I am so torn.

I want natural.

I want beauty.

I want joy.

I want our days to feel delight-directed, beautiful, joyful and natural.

In that regard, I decided a long time ago what really matters most to me. To keep it simple, the important things are:

• God
• Relationships
• Nature
• Reading aloud to them
• Reading ~ them reading to themselves
• Writing
• Basic Math

At this stage, the rest is inconsequential. As long as a love for God and Family is instilled, reverence for Nature is cultivated, a love of literature is developed and the basic skills are acquired, nothing else matters. The specifics and academics can come later. Content before about 7th grade just isn't that important.

But, then we come to me and my personality type. Although I realize what really matters and I want our days to flow naturally and I want my children to not see the separation of "school" and "life", I still need a plan. I need structure. I just can't let it go, let it flow. I feel like I need every detail planned out.

But, I want that natural, Unschooly flow.

That has been my dilemma. That is why my thoughts have been all over the map. That is why I've been quiet.

Regardless of my internal confusion, we have been settling into a nice rhythm around here. The girls really have been learning a lot (that's what keeps tugging at my Unschooling heart strings).

Our plans for the next month ~ getting some good walking shoes for Germany, making sure we all have jeans and long sleeves that fit, lining up long-term parking, getting some luggage, learning some German ... and getting super excited!

Somewhere along the way I also hope to get some things settled for school. I really have done quite a bit of research, thinking, pondering, note-taking and figuring. I'll start sharing some of that soon.

How are your homeschool plans coming?

Until next time,
   ~ IrieMomma