September

Cristina at Home Spun Juggling has a post, featured in this week's Carnival of Homeschooling, on the bittersweet memories of Labor Day, the beginning of fall, and the return to school, and wonders how her own homeschooled children feel this time of year.

My own memories include the fun of new school supplies; the sadness at the end of summer; the excitement of new teachers, new subjects, and seeing old friends again; the relief that came with the cooling of the air (down to highs in the 80s!); the fall webworms hanging from the pecan trees, the tiny new toads hopping around by the creek, hints of green starting to appear in the summer-browned lawns; and most of all, the sense of a year of childhood behind me, a year of life to come before me.

My children experience a shift, too, if not the same one. We do our hardest work during the summer, when it's too hot to do much outside, and there isn't much else going on (we take our long break from Thanksgiving to New Year's), so part of the shift is to less schoolwork. Homeschool activities usually follow the ISD schedule, as library and rec center spaces become unavailable in the summer, reserved instead for out-of-school activities. So now that we have our spaces back during the day, math team has started, chess club, drama.... The brutal summer weather begins to mitigate, and families start to come back to Park Day.... Bikes and roller blades replace swimming.... Daddy goes back to teaching and we all fall into our comfortable autumn rut.