I'm writing a blog post this morning while I wait for the hot dog buns to rise; I want to bake them before I leave the house. This morning, it's a trip to a playground until lunch time; lunch at home (hot dogs, coleslaw left over from dinner two days ago, and bell pepper soup left over from last night).
This afternoon, I'm going to tackle my 2014-2015 school papers. A slow-motion tackle, because I can't toss them until I've processed them somewhat.
My top priority is to compile a summary for each of the three subjects that I taught to H's and my 9th-graders, because they won't have a record that's good enough for college applications unless I do that, and I owe that to H's son (as well as to mine). My second priority is to compile summaries for the other subjects that my 9th-grader did. After that, I'll move to the subjects I taught to H's middle-school kids, and finally to the subjects that my younger kids did under my supervision. As I close out each subject, I'm planning to order the materials I need for the same subject next year, and make room in the shelves and bins for those materials to land as they arrive.
The binder in the foreground, with the child's painting of a flower on it, is — was — my Master Binder all last year. I'll open it up, turn to the section on "9th Grade History," and pull all the papers out. Then I'll grab all the emails in my "history work" section of my email folder, and all my daily record sheets, and sit down and write a summary of the year. I'll compile that, along with copies of all of H's son's written assignments that I might have in my own possession (he's supposed to have saved many of them in his own notebook and on his Google Drive account, and she should be able to access those without my help), and send it on. I expect this will be about three hours' work, some today, some tomorrow.
Then I'll throw out the material I don't think I'll need any more. I'll save some that might be helpful to me the next time I have a round of students studying Modern World History.
I'll get on the horn, er, internet, to various homeschooling and/or office supply vendors and buy the materials I think I still need to buy for next year's American History work (for which, God help me, I'm designing the curriculum from scratch).
And then I will do something similar with Latin and with Geometry.
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Normally we have a preschool music class on Wednesdays, but the new session doesn't start till next week, so my calendar is emptier than usual. Hence the playground visit. Going to the park this morning is something I have to force myself to do. All I want to do is sit in front of my computer and pound out curriculum plans and put more curriculum to bed.
Especially since we altered our screen time rules for the summer — in part so I would have plenty of morning time to crank out lesson plans — to be "I won't bug you till 2 p.m., but after 2 p.m. all screens are off, and by the way you aren't allowed to use Mom's computers at all." And it's morning, and my playground visit will eat into everyone's precious screen time.
But I need to at least pretend to be interested in encouraging play outside the house. Now where did I put that sunscreen? The hot dog buns are almost done.
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