Being Free to Be Free

I am sitting here this morning thinking that coffee is not going to be enough to get me really moving. In addition to a night of restless sleep, I have almost no motivation to drag the kids through a day of school. Theoretically, our school year concludes at the end of May, but usually as the days lengthen and the temperatures rise, we look at things and decide what we would like to accomplish in order to conclude our year instead. And even then, there's a point at which I am right there with the kids in thinking, "Lets just be done now. Forget end dates or checking off lists."

That feeling has been mentioned as a downside of homeschooling - that we don't have any outside influences to dictate the end of our school year or to enforce getting those last-minute assignments done. I sometimes agree, as my motivation and energy seriously flag and I find myself putting very little effort in keeping the kids from spending all day playing with (fellow homeschooling) neighbors in the sprinkler and engaging in mock swordfights in the backyard. But in these past couple days - and mind you, this could be the lack of motivation talking - I've been thinking that maybe it's completely natural and even good that our formal learning tends to end this way. After all, we lean toward a more natural style of learning, allowing the kids to learn in ways and times that best suit them, if possible, and allowing the day to flow in a natural routine rather than a schedule. While I'm certainly not advocating only doing things if we want, and shrugging them off if we don't, I do think perhaps it means something when every subject and assignment becomes a chore that everyone, including the mother, dreads doing. And I think it means it's time for a break.

In a few weeks, the kids will probably start getting restless and wandering around the house aimlessly at times. It will feel like a good time to reintroduce a little structure. We won't have to wait for a specific date or a specific set of books to arrive - we'll just know it's time. I think the same holds true here. So I'm still fighting with myself a bit - there are still a few things I wanted to finish, and I think I'll try to weave those things into our next few days. But I think I can also free myself from a sense of guilt about just being done. Let's face it - we're done. We're not slaves to a system, to a particular learning style, or to curriculum...so why should we be slaves to a calendar?