Summer homeschool - my favorite

just when you think that you're getting it right with homeschooling, she shows me how to do it better. This summer, Maya has made our home an "open house" to her neighborhood friends every afternoon, so much so that text/activity books are kept away and summer homeschool is on workshop mode: Half of the session before the kids show up, and the other half is when they're around -- the better half I believe.

1) I look forward to it everyday wondering what Maya has in store for us.. (so far it's been water color painting, colored pencil sketching, baking, tree climbing (for her, that is.), storytelling with clay puppeteering), And I find my inner child (and my outside adult), really having F-U-N!

2) Much like formal teaching (which I do in grad. school), you get to stop and realize that as "teacher" you do not "teach" but you facilitate the learning environment. So you organize exposure trips, you invite resource persons.. In summer homeschool, we invite the neighborhood kids (it's "open house" every afternoon.) and summer homeschool becomes a blast!

we play with the dollhouse and the dolls (and various characters, including dinosaurs..)
we get to draw, tell "childhood"/childish (?) stories
Maya reads to us...
we water the plants in leisure ( i would do that more in the lines of the "usual gardening routine" next to sweeping leaves.)

i get to be a child everyday... seeing not-so-new things in a new light..

some good things just get better and better...