Enjoy and Bless

Podcast Transcript:

So it’s back to school season. It’s August and it’s interesting figuring out what the back to school season looks like for our family.

Our general daily rhythm doesn’t change. It’s not like we’re starting a new curriculum or starting a new grade level. We continue with the learning projects and interests that we’ve had from the previous year, from the summer. And we shift things up just as we feel the desire to. So in one sense, not a lot changes.

But also, we do participate in activities outside of the home, so those do tend to follow a school schedule. For instance, at church, our kids leveled up a grade level, moved to new classrooms, some of them have new leaders. We restarted at our homeschool co-op. And soccer season will startup pretty soon. What else? One of my daughters is starting a new theater program and they have a fall production.

But in general, it’s not as obvious of a shift as for some families between summer and fall. Most of our daily rhythms stay the same.

But back to school season can be fun, and there’s fun energy around it, and we like to participate in that or I do, and the kids seem to enjoy it. So what we’ve decided is that we will declare an unfirst day of unschool where we’ll just choose a specific day to declare, okay, we’re shifting gears with the rest of the world and starting something fresh.

It’s a good time, kind of like at New Year’s, to just reassess everything. Look at what we’re doing, look at what we want to stop, what we might want to start, what we might want to shift a little. And we just choose a day to do something fun and take pictures to mark, you know, milestones as the children grow up.

I found a little worksheet, which I’m not, we don’t do many worksheets, but a little form to fill out that says their name, they’re grade—even though, you know, we don’t really follow grade level things with our learning. But just functioning in general society, you kind of need a grade level, usually. So their name, their grade, what they want to do when they grow up. Uh, their age. Yeah, anyway, just a little sheet like that, you know the kind. So we printed those out and we picked up some donuts and coffee and took it to the park and sat outside. It was a beautiful day and we colored, filled in the sheets, took pictures, and that was how we jumpstarted our unschool year, our next unschool year. So I enjoyed that. I think the kids enjoyed that.

And I feel like it was extra special this year because my son is home with us full time this year, so I think that was special to him to get a feel for what the girls and I have been doing while he has been at his micro school.

Another part of back to school is school supplies, right? So, I mean, at this point we have all the basics. We’ve got notebooks and pencils and crayons and scissors and paint and glue. Like, we just have all that stuff at the house. So we don’t really need to get more and we replenish it as we need it throughout the year. But I did want to pick up some special items related to the specific learning goals that the kids have for themselves.

So, for example, my son wanted to learn all about monster trucks. So I found a smash and bash, gravedigger, remote control truck, as a special surprise for him to start the unschool year. And also picked up some books about monster trucks—books to read, I think a sticker book, an activity book. There’s one with magnets that’ll be fun for him. So that was kind of his school supply list for the year.

My middle child daughter has gotten into trapeze work, acrobatics, aerial acrobatics. She had been asking for a trapeze for the yard to put on our swing set, so I picked up a trapeze for her. She also needed some new dance wear for classes she’s taking. And she wanted a calendar flip book that has a verse a day. I thought that was really sweet that she wanted that. So I picked that up for her. And she was wanting something to read every day to keep up with kind of what’s going on in the world. So I subscribed here to a daily kids newsletter that she… Actually—I’m trying to remember—I think she wanted something to come to her email regularly. That’s what it was. So I was like, well, what would make sense to get regularly emailed that she could check. Oh, because that was another big part of our school year is I actually got email addresses for all the kids. None of them had email addresses yet and certain things have come up where it’s, I’ve thought, you know what? It would be nice if that email could go directly to them. So that was exciting. for the girls at least. I don’t know that my son really will be checking his email, but I wanted to get one for him too.

I also picked up a couple board games that I thought would be fun for our family. My daughters were interested in one called Hues and Clues that looks really interesting around color language and what you picture in your mind when you think of Apple, what color comes to mind.

So that gives you a glimpse into our kind of somewhat conventional, somewhat unconventional, Unfirst Day of Unschool and the school supplies we picked up for the year. And we’ll add supplies as, you know, interests emerge or different projects come to mind.

I hope it’s helpful to hear our approach to the start of the school year, and I’m always interested to hear other people, how they, fun things they do to start the year off, or unique school supplies that you get.

So there’s just a glimpse into what’s going on in our world right now. I might follow up with a post about what our daily rhythm is going to look like this fall.

Thanks for listening. I hope you’re finding ways to enjoy learning with your children and being a blessing to others.