How Many Days Remain in Your School Year?

I was looking at our curriculum the other day... trying to figure out just how many days remain before we reach the conclusion of My Father's World (first grade). You'd think that would be easy enough to figure out, but I've done just enough curriculum tweaking that it took me a good 10 minutes to find my answer! lol

As a side note... I want to mention that there's absolutely nothing wrong with MFW as it is... I love it... my son loves it, even my 5 year old daughter loves the portions she's able to follow, but being the individual that I am... I just had to reshape certain portions to make them fit my teaching style and my son's learning style. Nice to have that option. ; )

So... how many days do we have before we can start prepping for second grade? As of next Monday, if we stay on track... we have 50 days to go. Take out weekends and that's just over 2 months of school before we can put a fork in this school year and call it done. If we have no sick days and never schedule a day off, that would land our last day of school in the last week of May. I think it would be more honest to say we'll be done the first week of June, since we've yet to have a month when we didn't need to schedule at least one day off for one reason or another. Usually, for illness, but occasionally to accommodate doctor appointments or family visits from out of town.

Here's the question I'm even more curious about. How many of you school during the Summer months? I went back and forth on this issue for a very long time. Originally I said we'd homeschool 3 days a week over the summer and carry a lighter load, but now I'm thinking I'll do something completely different from what we've come to know as homeschooling. Something completely unstructured, engaging and stimulating to keep our brains busy, growing and happy.

After my latest brainstorming session with only myself (yes I do that quite a lot) I've decided that I want to incorporate a Charlotte Mason sort of approach to learning about the world around, by having my children create nature books, do some lapbooking, maybe get an ant farm and grow something in the backyard. I'm not an outdoorsy type, so this will be somewhat outside of my comfort zone, but I've learned there are great treasures to be found outside our comfort zones! lol Since entering my 30's that's actually been my new thing... trying to live outside the walls I built up many years ago... ok, that's another post.

Back to summer school... my homework has already started since I haven't a clue what sorts of things we could/should grow in our backyard or how to care for them. I haven't a clue what sorts of things we might find living around our home, or how to look for them. I have no experience to draw from in these areas, so mommy will be learning right along with the kids. Sound like fun or what? It's sort of embarrassing really. I know that in our front yard we have a pear tree of some sort and we have a couple Maples, but other than that I can only guess as to what is growing in and around our yard and throughout our neighborhood. lol I also wonder as I write this, if you can plant and grow in the Summer. We might actually have to start that in the Spring. Maybe I do know at least that much! Maybe.

I'd like to teach the kids about plants and animals native to our area... especially things like birds, flowers, plants and trees . I'm also just looking forward to having picknicks in the front yard and afterwords lying on our backs, looking up at the sky, watching the clouds change shapes. What a blessing! I'm so blessed to be home with my kids, to have the constitutional right to homeschool (despite what a court in CA says), blessed to live in an area rich with homeschooling resources and opportunities, and just blessed in general to realize how blessed I am! lol

Ok... let's all get back to school'in our kidlets!