Coasting

It begins.

The last two weeks of schooling have been about as uneventful as it gets. Both of the boys are wrapping up their math work for the year, JT on Thinkwell, EM with Singapore 5B. We did our last Story of the World lesson last week, our last American History reading yesterday, last spelling test tomorrow. We have two more science lessons remaining, one is an experiment with some potential for excitement involving production of gases. I love it when the instructions include a step that says, "...bring the burning splint to the mouth of the jar. Be prepared for a reaction." After that experiment, there's really not much left to do except finish recording our work and close up the classroom.

Once we picked up the replacement printer, I started production for the portfolios. I'm not very original. We just keep using the same format year after year. Thanks to that, I had most of the documents ready to go with just a few alterations before printing. The most time-consuming portion of the project is taking pictures of their art so I can print a page of examples of their work. I'll probably tackle that project next week. I really want to wrap this whole thing up within a few days of our last day, May 2nd. Usually, I'll let it drag out until the day before we meet with the evaluator, but this year we planned a vacation to celebrate the end of the school year. We will be spending a week in Ogunquit, Maine!

We are all pretty excited about this trip. None of us have ever been to Maine. The closest I have been was on a ten year anniversary trip to Vermont with my husband, twelve years ago. Not many of the usual attractions will be open yet, since we will be staying pre-season, but we got a great deal on a cottage right on the shore. I want this trip to be about relaxation, not planned events. I recently read a blog post about the under-appreciation of rest in our society at Becoming Minimalist, that really made me change the plan for our vacation. I wanted to try to work a day trip into Boston into the week. We may still do it, but only if we can do it without much added planning and stress. Really, all I want to do is sit on the beach and stare at the ocean.

Before I can do that, I need to wrap up year six of our journey. Summer will probably have more planning time than usual since I have high school looming for JT. In the meantime, we'll just glide through these last few days of schooling with our eyes on the rest ahead.