179 Days

I'm trying to allow myself to do less than 180 days of school. For years I've lived in a state that required homeschoolers to do 18o days of instruction. So, I kept an "attendance" record and logged all our field trips, sick days, Friday School, P.E. and acting classes and made it add up to at least 180 (it usually went a little over).

I think the 180 mark is a good one to shoot for but does that mean 180 days of assignments and projects and progress in their math books or is it 180 days of intentional educational experiences...even some "unintentional" ones?

So, today we accepted an invitation to play, experience a new park, swim in some refreshing water, listen to the kids play Marco Polo and watch them bury each other in the sand. What an awesome day of education...watching the fuzzy caterpillars crawling on the playground, exploring the arc of the watersprayers at the spray ground, and hands-on relational lessons in friend-making. Today I got to experience that freedom that we have as homeschoolers to chuck it all and do something different. Oregon won't hold me accountable for it. So, I'm not going to either. This year it's going to be 179 days (maybe less).