Starting Well after a Chaotic Ending

I had great intentions for our last month of school for the 2013-2014 year.  Wrap up a lap book unit on the Addy series by American Girl, Finish CLE math books through 209, go on a couple field trips and do some free journal writing, and do some beginning Spanish since we knew that Isabelle would be adding Spanish with her co-op class in the fall and needed to catch up.

Then came a mini-flood.

Our refrigerator sprung a leak in the water tank and went all under the laminate flooring and soaked the basement bedroom.  Two weeks of demo of the damaged goods.  A domino affect of remodel projects.  Our house became a flurry of construction workers, noise, and mess.  School was attempted in other locations, but just didn't work well.  Things finally put back together and we resumed summer life late June.

For about 6 days.

Then another water leak.  Same spot, different problem.  We had replaced the fridge, but this time is was the water main to the fridge that leaked.  Ripped up brand new flooring.  And here we are August 1st still waiting to have it "finished".

Needless to say, my expectations for finishing out our first year of homeschooling didn't quite lead to reality.  In all, it has been ok.  We've spent time with family, read different books, and just played a lot.  We didn't end well, but the beauty of homeschooling is that learning never truly ends and you just roll with that.

Once our fall activities and commitments started filling in, I realized how important it was going to be start intentionally with more structured schooling.  Our days of play and pajamas needed to start resembling a little more purposeful learning.  So this week has been our "soft start" of school for the 2014-2015 year.

We have focused on exploring our new curriculum books, making goals and 'rules', reviewing concepts, and slowly starting to add new subjects.  We'll have a week of camping and a week of a cottage trip, but hopefully this steady start will help us successfully navigate our fall launch of activities and full school schedule.  It has been a hair pulling week at times (you forget how much kids forget after a few weeks off!) but overall it has been great for us to get back into the routine.  I hope that this intentionality will pay off as September rolls around.