Spring is finally here! Cecelia has been asking me when spring will be here before December started…needless to say some of us have been looking forward to it more intensely than others.
I have put off the finishing of this homeschool journal and proceeded to engage in the very real life of homemaking, homeschooling, chicken tending and preparing for our amazing garden. As I finally sit down to write about this month I am astonished and so thankful at the abundance of life.
This gardening season is extremely special for our family as it is the first year in our new home. We have been dreaming about our “garden oasis” for the last couple years. The girls and I used to look at Pinterest and save ideas on what flowers to grow in our pollinator garden, what our veggie list must be and how to build garden trellises. Our garden dreams have been budding into real life!
As March has come in with plants begging to revive and the sun gracing us with it’s presence we have not only watched the plants awaken but we have felt the awakening within ourselves. I find that my brain is happy to operate on the schedule of the seasons and so we schedule our lives accordingly. What I mean by this is something simple and as old as time; we choose to ebb and flow with the seasons. It will look different for every family and individual but essentially it gives my brain the stopping, starting and resting points so that I don’t burn out. All of us do this to some degree but as a person who’s tendency is to steamroll through life and burn out hard, I have to be very intentional about this.
So here we are in the season of awakening and coming out of the quiet season of reflection and rest. We’ve begun planning our backyard garden and have even added some members to our family! 🐓
We’ve incorporated these things into our daily routines but also into our homeschool for this month and the months to come. So what does that look like?
Another really special thing that we’ve been incorporating into our homeschool routine has been trips to our local library. It’s been a joy collecting resources to use for teaching while my kids delight in picking out new books for fun. You can also place book requests for children and adult books as the local libraries usually have a monthly budget to order new books. This is a great way to save money while you are homeschooling your kiddos.
It’s also been delightful for me to explore some of the books that I aspire to read and also some that I didn’t know I needed to read. If you asked me what an ideal outing would look like for my introverted self, it would be to wander between the shelves of the library, making book lists and ogling at the fact that human history has been connected by thoughts and stories on a page for much of our existence.
As we continue with our classical kindergarten curriculum we have made our way down the required reading list of fine books by creative authors. Here are a few we’ve read in the month of March:
Among the joys of reading Arnold Lobel’s wonderful children’s books, such as Frog And Toad, we have had the opportunity to study the lifecycle of amphibians. We used a free printable we found on google for a visual. We read aloud out of The Handbook Of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock and we explored our local park to see if we could spot any frog eggs or maybe some early tadpoles.
No such luck on eggs and tadpoles but we had a wonderful time exploring at the park!
Another delight of this season is growing new things. It’s taken me years of trial and error(such is life) to be able to grow anything. It feels like a really lovely accomplishment and a God given blessing to watched our cute little sprouts sitting in the window reaching out of the soil toward the sunshine.
Naturally, this is a perfect and rather easy task to involve kids in. They punch their little fingers down into the soil, drop precious little seeds of all different shape, size and color into the cute little starter pots and voilà! I life lesson as well as impromptu school curriculum. These will be moments cherished by them and you.
We’re also beginning to prepare for the coming school year as we near the end of this one. We will be doing memoria press homeschool with both of our girls this coming year but also incorporating some Spanish curriculum as well as a more structured nature study! You don’t have to begin the process of prepping for the next school year now, but it’s often cheaper and easier to have curriculum ready to go before fall.
I wanted to add a little note for those feeling overwhelmed:
If this all seems like a lot to you, that’s because it is. We don’t always move at this pace but right now it works for us. It’s not a requirement for anyone homeschooling, charter schooling, public schooling, etc. to go out and tack on all the extracurriculars, activities and household responsibilities. If you had asked me to do this homeschool/homemaking/hobbies load a year ago I would have crawled out of my skin. My schedule isn’t prescriptive, it’s personal. With that being said, I have learned over the last 10 years of my life to operate within my own enjoyment and capacity. My goal is to engage and enjoy life while glorifying the God who made me. Therefore, when He allows me to go through health issues, bouts of depression and overwhelm, I feel no shame in dropping some tasks, habits or hobbies to adapt to our current season. In the same thought process, when He allows secure, restful seasons that allow me the headspace for extra things, I feel the call to create accordingly.
I add this part because we live in a culture that feels entitled to our vulnerability, lifestyles and morals. Due to that, I like to regularly remind people in these online spaces that we are responsible for our own perception of reality and stewardship of our own real lives. I want to share with you the pieces of our homeschool that I think is worth sharing and sometimes it will look beautiful and put together and sometimes it wont. The trap isn’t what other people share of their lives but when we get caught up in comparisons that we allow to control us. When what we view is how we experience validation, there will also be the consequence of it being the place where it develops and triggers unresolved insecurities and eventually builds resentment.
My hearts hope for you is that if you are starting new projects, keeping up with what you’ve started or slowing down for sanity’s sake, that you will feel encouraged. If you and your child need a new and exciting adventure to embark on or if you need the peace and tranquility of a restful routine, there are ideas and support out there for all of the things.
Our fall and winter are the months that I love to slow down. It’s cold outside, their are wonderful Holidays to cherish and plenty of time to reflect. I can’t decide which season is my favorite, perhaps because I need them all. But I can say with certainty:
I am so thankful Spring is here.
Goodbye March, Happy April!
The Crunchy Vagabond 