School’s Out for Summer!

Jill's Journal: We are insanely proud of three little girls, who today successfully completed their first year of homeschooling and did it on the road to boot. We started after Labor Day in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and finished today in Eugene, Oregon. Every conventional student we know has been out of school for at least two weeks, but as I told a friend, we probably take just a few more field trips than the average school. :)

Erika survived first grade with me at the helm! What a year it has been. I’m not sure who learned more – me or her – but the awesome thing is we did it together.

Madelyn completed her second year of preschool and is headed to kindergarten in the fall. She has been a hard-working and eager student who simply didn't have the patience to wait for kindergarten to start reading, so she’ll definitely have a head start on her coming year. How do these babies grow up so fast?

And Victoria, the little stinker, has learned so much by osmosis that she’s right on track to rule the world someday, just as she plans. She is so incredibly excited about starting preschool in the fall.

Somehow we got lucky and chose the most amazing curriculum that emphasizes world history and awareness, so we’ll simply continue on the same track next year (especially now that this once-upon-a-time-daunted-by-homeschooling-mama knows what she’s doing). This giant, markable floor map from Erika’s year shows every country she's learned a little about so far. What a simple but profound concept – she simply found each country and marked it on the map as we learned about it. This has given her a grasp of geography at age seven that is out of this world. And wow, has that ever carried over to her sisters (Madelyn is especially thrilled to be getting her own map next year). The other day we said something about Italy and Victoria, at age three, said, “You mean the boot?”