The last few weeks have been all about preparing for the end-of-the-year homeschooling meeting. Basically it’s a meeting where we prove that Evan actually learned stuff last year while we were on the road following a homeschool program.
While logically I knew that that was a relatively easy task, I still freaked out about it something fierce. In fact, last week I made a Facebook live video about it. Ya know, about how I felt like this meeting was more about deciding whether I was an OK parent/teacher then it was about what Evan had learned. Just go watch….it’s much more funny to watch than read.
After freaking out for weeks, today was the day. Our homeschool program meeting was at 1 o’clock so this morning I wrote my friend Carrie and asked if she would like to meet for a walk. Otherwise, I knew I would sit on the couch and rewrite everything I had prepared for the meeting 14 times because it wasn’t good enough. I also knew that that was stupid because what I had was great. But we all know that my brain would have overruled my logic and I would’ve done it anyway.
So instead we walked to St. Patrick’s Island with Evan, Cooper, Carrie and her dog, Fender. It was a beautiful morning with bright sunshine and blue skies and Starbucks. Pretty much the perfect morning to keep my crazy at bay.
After our walk, Evan and I headed to our homeschooling program facilitation meeting. Unfortunately, we figured out last night that we had left some of our key pieces of artwork that we planned to show at the lake. Because of course we had. Regardless, the meeting went great. Even though she only met Evan twice, our facilitator had great ideas about ways to help Evan be a better learner. She also introduced us to tools to help him with his struggle getting his ideas out of his brain and onto paper.
It was a really great meeting and we spent most of the time chatting about what we did on our trip. Evan was in fine form, pulling random facts out of the air that I didn’t even know he knew. It was really cool to relive our trip and understand that we did something really cool and we both learned a ton of new things.
To celebrate the day being a complete success, we headed to Village Ice Cream to have celebratory ice cream cones. It was a great way to end a pretty great day and a pretty great year. Now we have moved on to figuring out next year. Evan is definitely ready to go back to real school (any mention of returning to the homeschool program gets a big NO) but we have a few options to choose from. Sure would be nice if kids came with instruction manuals with exactly what was best for them laid out and easy to follow terms.
So we’ll spend the next few months weighing our options, talking with Evan and maybe touring some schools. Since his instruction manual seems to have gotten lost in the mail, we’ll do our best to make all the right choices. Thankfully, I realize today more than ever that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Evan is awesome and smart and funny. He has his challenges but he can get past them and learn. And I am the best tool he has in his toolbox of learning. Because I can help figure out what he needs and make sure he gets it.
I am so glad we did our year away but now….SUMMER!