Sunny Skies

I consider myself someone who is perfectly happy in gray, drizzly weather. And yet, I've been rather grumpy these last couple of weeks, and the grumpiness kind of melted away when the sun came out.

M planned out his agenda for tomorrow and had me write it down for him so he doesn't forget:

1. Run through the sprinklers

2. Bake cookies 

3. Lay in front of a fan and listen to a book on tape

4. Make one of the crystals in my crystal kit

5. Go to OMSI

6. Eat the cookies.

If I was setting the kids' agenda, this is just the kind of list I'd want to put together. Sometimes I fret about not doing enough structured schoolwork, sometimes I'm perfectly content doing maybe 3-5 hours worth of structured school work per week, and sometimes it seems like most of the structured work is a waste of time. The thing I repeatedly come back to, though, is that a reasonable amount of structured work is good, and it is good to take breaks from it. When the kids are filling their time with baking, doing science experiments, drawing, writing stories and plays, playing outside, using their bodies and imaginations, living in the physical, natural world or the world of imagination, I'll almost never interrupt them to do schoolwork. But my kids also like to use the analytic/academic parts of their brains, and sometimes they look to me to feed these parts of their brains, and this is when structured school work is just the ticket. Also, there are some particular skills I think it is important to learn (like basic math), so we find a way to fit those things in on a fairly regular basis.

On beautifully summer days like today, after what seems like 10 months of cold and rainy weather, playing with friends, spraying each other with the hose on the trampoline, swinging, watching ants wrestle crumbs along the driveway, and laying around in the shade staring at the trees are exactly the right things to be doing.