Week Zero

Tomorrow begins Week Zero of our 2013/2014 school year.   Why Zero?

In a sudden, late burst of enthusiasm for the new school year, I typed up 2 weeks worth of work plans.  Then I realized that after the summer we've had, there's no way we're jumping right into all the work we have planned.   So, Week Zero.

It begins tomorrow, at the pool at a local-ish state park.  This is the last week the pool is open, and the first time we'll get there, despite plans to swim there oh, three or four times over the summer.  It's been a weird summer, in terms of both weather and ability to get out to the pool.  On the days we were free, it rained. Is there a message for me there? 

On the way there or back, we'll listen to a Great Courses lecture, from the series "The World was Never the Same."  The lecture is called "Dante Sees Beatrice" and we're listening in preparation for reading The Inferno together this year.   The speaker is very engaging, so I don't expect listening will be a burden. 

I'll finish reading The Giver aloud, and we'll talk about it a bit. We're reading that because we needed a family read-aloud that is fairly short.  But also, it's on a lot of lists so I thought I should read it.  There are sequels but my kids can decide to read those if they want.  I think my 16-year-old will be taking on 1984 and Brave New World next, though.

We'll also clean out the school crates, recycle the old science and test-prep workbooks we never finished, and generally clean up.

The 16-year-old will do a practice CLEP test (Humanities or Western Civ I, we're not sure yet) to see how he does and if testing like that is a viable option for us.  This isn't an official test, just at the kitchen table with the practice test book.  Should be fun!

It's been almost three months since my last post, and this is only my fifth post for 2013!   I don't have any illusions that I'm going to be a regular blogger again anytime soon.  I don't know if I'm going to go back to my 2013 reading page and update it.  Goodreads seems to have taken the place of that.  Whenever I make a blogging commitment to myself, I almost immediately have cause to break it.  I do miss it, though.

Despite our lack of swimming, it wasn't a terribly bad summer, but not a terrifically good one, either.  I was seriously burned out on homeschooling, even parenting in general.  I read a few fluff books. I did some cleaning and organizing.  We did manage some field trips, though not the trip-per-week I had planned.I stopped reading blogs altogether, even my favorite homeschool blogs.   But I seem to be coming out of it. 

A good session of homeschool planning, with books and papers piled all around me, will do it every time.