School is Done

School did not end so much as it faded away. My two school kids opted out of the last week of school because none of the teachers were taking attendance, neither of them ever used their locker (and thus had no need to clean it out,) and they didn’t care about year books. So there was no point and they didn’t go. Officially school ended yesterday. My kids celebrated a week ago.

On the day that school officially ended, I began the summer schedule. This process merely means that I stick a list to the front of their computer screens at bedtime. When they wake up they do the things on the list before using their screens. It is a workable system. It went beautifully yesterday, less well this morning. Weekends don’t get morning lists. Instead the residents of the house may get dragged into a project if I have one going. For tomorrow I’m eyeing the garage. There are things in there that we haven’t used in years. It is past time to evict them. Also, we need to fix up their bikes, because one of the goals for this summer is that the kids spend more time outdoors, preferably active. Also, if they aren’t going to use their bikes, then the bikes are among the things which should go.

I have felt much calmer and happier these past few days. I hadn’t realized how much psychological space school was taking up. I’m paying attention to that, because there is a cost/benefit analysis to be done between public school and home schooling. Next school year needs to be different, even if that means ditching public school. For now the plan is to do a mixture. And I can’t make final decisions until I have more than two days of data on how the list-in-the-morning plan goes.