School Days

I've been seeing all of these cute pictures on Facebook of everyone sending their kids back to school with titles like "First day of 1st grade,"  "First day of Middle School," "My baby's in high school!"

It got me to thinking about our school...what grade is Jake actually in, 1st or 2nd?  Should we continue year round with intermittent breaks or take a long summer break?  Are we doing enough?  Do I have the right curriculum?  Blah, blah, blah....  This summer has been good for me.  It's allowed me to get a good look at how Jake is doing compared to others (i.e. how I'm doing as a teacher) and also to remember why we chose to homeschool in the first place (besides living in the middle of the ocean on a boat).  And finally, to remind me to quit comparing him to others (I know, that's the first thing I did).   I'm not going to go too deep into this...not because I'm afraid of the arguments but because I'm still working it out myself.  See, I like rules.  I like to follow rules and I like to check boxes off of lists that show that I'm following the rules.  I'm having trouble with this as a "boat"schooling mom (incidentally, sometimes I have trouble with the lack of routine for myself!) because rarely can we check the boxes nice and neat like.  But what I can say is that I have gotten more compliments here on his manners, how articulate he is, his vocabulary, and just what fun he is to be around.

So when an opportunity to have some fun came up this week, guess what we did?  We ditched the books and went on a field trip!  Jake and I drove down to San Diego to see some of our cruising friends who were also home for a visit.  We hadn't seen Rutie, Neal, and Corie (s/v Rutea) since American Samoa so it was really nice to sit down and hear about their travels to New Zealand and Fiji and share our travels further north.  In between visits, Jake and I managed to take in the U.S.S. Midway (one of Jake's favorite ships) where he received his "Junior Pilot Wings" and then we spent another 4 hours at the San Diego Zoo.  Both of us slept like a rock last night.

Jake made me take this picture :)

Today we're back at the books with a boring old Math test and some mandatory journal writing (something I'm trying to make him do after our "field trips"), but the spirits are a bit higher and the student is a bit more agreeable.

I've vowed to quit worrying so much about how we're doing by everyone else's standards and just follow my gut, which has served me well in the past.

Last weekend, we went to the U.S.S Iowa with Papa and Gigi to kick off our
week of field trips.

On a totally different subject...Andy has two more weeks left in Afghanistan and he is counting down the days.  He'll be back in Pohnpei by the first week of September and we'll join him shortly after.  He sent me a picture of him and his co-workers so I"ll leave you with that....the next picture I post of him had better be in a bathing suit, a tan, drinking a beer on Savannah!