First day of First Grade!

I had a long mental list of things I was planning to do with Charlotte this summer and I can't say that we did any of it but she had an amazing summer so I'm not beating myself up over this.

There's this educational bug that's going around that makes parents want to cram as much knowledge as possible into our kids heads.  Make them read as many books as possible over the summer.  Make them do math every day.  It's helpful when people post articles about "Unschooling" on Facebook to help bring the frazzled overburdened parent back to earth. 

This summer, Charlotte left home for a month and not once did she call in a panic out of boredom or fear.  I knew she's be okay but I really thought she might need a little more hand holding, more phone calls, etc.  She did not. 

She left for Texas on June 26th, a week after her birthday and spent about one week in Texas with family.  She then went on a 2 day road trip with her grandparents to Montana where they stayed for two weeks.  She then did the return trip back to Texas and flew home on July 29th, just in time to celebrate Sam's birthday. 

She hasn't stopped talking about this trip since returning.  The outdoor stuff she discovered like finding dead animals, a bird that Odie the Dalmatian may have killed, a butterfly that had it's head fall off, a bag of rocks that were brought back to paint because she found a lovely one in a shop that she wanted to imitate.  So much learning and we just had to set her free to discover things.  This is the beauty of education.  The ugly part is the cramming.  Let's just hope I've learned my lesson and don't go into over drive next summer thinking we have to do school every day!