Summer Musings

I am not surprised that the majority of people do not undertake their children's educations themselves. While I firmly believe that homeschooling is the right choice for us (at least for my oldest daughter), the pressures of that choice have really been weighing on me of late. Jessica is startlingly bright, but she is also shockingly lazy. I really feel the need of some external force to motivate her, to drive her, to make her realize that she's not the only child in the world who does lessons.

It is unfortunate, of course, that we are still finishing her math book, but lately, she has become very melodramatic about it. I'm only requiring her to do one lesson a day, which takes less than 30 minutes, but I found her writing in a letter that the summer was going to be "awful" because of having to do school. She told me that summertime was "for going new and exciting places, like Europe." Maybe I shouldn't let her read so much....

I am trying to do lots of fun things with them, though. I bought one of those little wading pools at Wal-Mart, and all of the girls had a wonderful time "swimming" this afternoon. We've also been having friends over to play about once a week. Next month will be filled with houseguests and trips to a violin workshop and to my in-laws' house. I do hope that my girls have an enjoyable time this summer. I also hope I better prepare myself for the coming schoolyear, so we can have more of a break next summer.