Doting on Deirdre: Summer Circle Time

We're closing in on the end of the traditional school year. My son goes to speech therapy at our local elementary school and it is buzzing with testing and the end of the school year jitters.

For us however we really do schooling year round. After spending some time thinking about what to do this summer I finally realized that we'll just keep doing what we do every summer and every season.

Even before we began home-schooling somewhat formally this year- and as in formally I mean really just making what we have been doing official and being a bit more intentional- we always read books, went on outings, and did crafts geared around the seasons.

I can remember when I first began this blog back in summer 2009 how Deirdre was just old enough to do crafts and we tried our hand a pudding painting. We'd visit the library weekly and as we'd go in I'd ask, "what do you want to learn about this week?" We'd always leave with a stack of books on that subject she answered and that's what we'd do that week.

So as summer makes it's way towards us, we're continuing doing what we have always been doing. Living and learning as we go about our daily and weekly rhythm. The kids have become so used to circle time that I hardly can go without doing it every morning. We do a daily art activity and the books that we read in circle time are the same ones we read at bed. The song and verse we're learning over the next few weeks, is sung all through-out our day. Our play takes on the theme we're learning about. It just all flows so well together.

So I thought I'd share with you what our circle time looked like today. A week before the season changes, I begin telling the kids about what is coming as a way to transition. So today summer came to introduce herself. I introduced our summer verse, book, and song. We did a caterpillar finger play and read our poem about May for one of the last times before we did our calendar. Then to end our school day we packed a picnic and went to the lagoon- one of our favorite summer pastimes. Needless to say the kids are excited for summer.

As I begin planning next year I will come back and share a bit of what we've done over the past 9 months. I hope it might serve as a encouragement to you if this is your first jaunt into home-schooling or Waldorf. Many things we idd were lovely and then there were things that did not quite fit. There was lots of unlearning I needed to do this year as well. My very type A public schooled and rigid brain had a HARD time trusting my heart on what was right for my children versus what the world around me was saying.

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