Ready or not, here we go! Actually we are very ready here. August is the beginning of my favorite time of year. It is so full of promise and excitement. We start with Back to School and march right into changing colors and fall festivals, pilgrims and turkey, and then Christmas prep. There is a momentum that builds steadily from now til the new year. It is a golden season indeed.

My earliest memories of Back to School prep are highly sensory. I remember the smell of new erasers and crayons quite vividly.  Those erasers were flawless when first acquired and it was always a bit disappointing to see them get stubby later. Number 2 pencils were on the list as well though I would discover later that both harder and softer leads would create more satisfying sketches. I am still a purist though – I prefer school pencils painted yellow and everyone knows erasers must be pink. : ) Though I was not graced with an abundance of organizational skills as a child I was very visual and early on began to color coordinate notebooks, folders and book jackets for each subject.

Now I am the teacher and Back to School prep has taken on a whole new dimension. I still like the way new erasers smell, but our shopping list is much expanded. Instead of folders and spiral notebooks we have binders and sketchbooks. Instead of construction paper we have acid-free cardstock. Stockmar replaces Crayola.   Though there is a rush when the man in the brown truck arrives, it is not just about the "stuff". It is about the promise.

Like many many summers that have come before, we enter August with several weeks, months in fact, of research and prayer under our belts. We have thought long and hard about the previous year. We have reflected upon what went especially well and what needs extra attention. We have smiled over our successes and have noted with regret those things that we didn’t get to as often as we would have liked.

For the homeschool mom August is our new year, complete with resolutions. Mine echo Robert Fulghum’s. This year I resolve to "think some and learn some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some".  This figures into our schedule in a big way. 

I recently picked up an inspiring book called Living Artfully by Sandra Magsamen. I immediately began marking it up with notes and little stars and it played into my school planning in a big way. At some point in the journey from  small people to larger we tend to change from drawing/painting/singing people to fretting/cleaning/fussing people. We do less singing and more muttering. At some point in the homeschool journey  we often stop dancing and start rushing. Serendipity and joy are replaced with plotting and second guessing. My hope is that by using art as a medium for other studies we can help counter those tendencies.

So – plans?  I am a big picture planner. I plan for us to be immersed in good lit. I plan to hit the core subjects responsibly everyday. I plan for them to learn by doing. I plan to learn with the children. Planning is almost addictive in its own way too however and I "plan" to not be sucked into endless hours on the internet looking for yet another unit study or printable. There are incredible resources but there is a fine line between planning and escapism and too often we homeschool moms find ourselves on the wrong side of it. Instead I will focus on the old standbys which have sustained us through the years, many of which are on the sidebars here so I won’t take up space describing them all.

This year we are scratching cleverly devised preprinted notebook pages in favor of hand drawn narrations. There are so many wonderful premade pages and resources to make them. I soooo do not want to be tied to a screen this year though. I hope to have the children write something everyday about what they have learned. By hand. With no screens buzzing, no worries about ink running out or cpus freezing up. Just us and our materials.  We will use the Avilian notebooking system to corral whatever combination of papers we have in the different subjects and bind them when the week is over.

Music will continue to be a major consideration in our schedule. For years now we have had background music wafting from the living room for the better part of our days as many of you know when you call me. : ) I am not sure what I will do when the last player leaves home!

Waldorf resources are a noteworthy addition to our homeschool this year. I am not an anthroposophist, though I was one long ago and far away. I rejected that theology and, to some extent, the accompanying art and rhythm was cast out as well.  With a whole new bunch of eager students, however, I find I miss the mom I used to be. I have spent the summer rediscovering my inner ‘hippie chick’ I guess lol! This year is about reclaiming what was good  while substituting what for us was not workable ideologically. I am especially enjoying the Oak Meadow Home Teaching Process Manual which reminds you to step back and reflect regularly. It helps teacher and student to achieve harmony and avoid conflict, not by releasing either from their responsibility but by fostering mutual respect. This works for us. The Waldorf Homeschoolers site is chock full of resources to help flesh out the ideals. I prefer this site to investing in packaged curricula which may need extensive investment and extensive discernment.

The mainstays of Waldorf Education were already present in our homeschool but adapted to our faith and family:

Rhythm – you have heard me say it if you are a regular visitor. Its not so much schedule as it is flow. While factory-like planning is neither necessary nor desirable children do thrive on routine. Knowing what comes next and when is reassuring to all of us.

Festivals – we are a liturgical faith and our year is built around a calendar of recurring feasts and fasts.

Heads, Hearts, and Hands – I mentioned this one. Arts based learning brings meaning and engages the learner on deeper levels than seat work alone could.

Block study – really another name for unit studies. Though in our family it is not just about studying one thing for a concentrated amount of time. It is also about integrating all the students into that study on their own levels. I don’t subscribe to the scientific/mystical effects of teaching Old Testament tales at 9 or fables at 7. In my opinion teaching is still more art than science and children are much more flexible than that.

Media/Materials – as with Montessori, electronic media and manmade materials are discouraged in childhood. I would go further and suggest that they don’t do much for adults either.

Making books – Waldorf schools (again – as with Montessori schools) eschew textbooks in favor of children creating their own keepsake notebooks called main lesson books. Say no more. We have long been sold on this idea. 

Nature Study – A Charlotte Mason favorite as well.

Montessori is still as near and dear to my heart as ever. I am taking Karen Tyler’s Montessori Album class online and her albums will keep the preschoolers busy learning and honing their skills. Her grace and courtesy lessons are especially wonderful and will assure that we cover things like blowing one’s nose discreetly. <g>

We are also doing preschool co-op on Fridays which the little ones are so looking forward to. This year we are focusing on letters and numbers and pulling some resources from the Alphabuddies and Letter of the Week sites.  We plan to use lots of alphabet books like the Alphabet Book of Saints, The Butterfly Alphabet, and Animalia. We are incorporating stories about numbers and letters – such as the The Three Little Pigs (3)and Jamberry (J).  Each week the children will draw their letter or number, illustrate it with something from the story, and create their own books. I will likely be posting links to our "Friday Funschool" activities on this blog so the other co-op moms can expand upon them at home.

Lest this all sound a bit too rosy let me assure you, our life has a multitude of challenges. A MULTITUDE. This year in particular. There is no easy button. Why then add more to the plate by way of time-consuming arts? As Sandra says, it isn’t about "adding on, but about adding meaning to – to anything and everything you do".   We can take moments to make something meaningful or find our lives full of meaningless activity.  When moments are hard to come by it is even more important to make each of them count.

So there you have it. My edu-vision for the coming school year. We are committing it all to prayer because we know in our hearts we can do nothing by ourselves. With the grace of God however we hope that we can make something beautiful of our year.