Friday, August 20, 2010

The Lists: A Summer Update

Lists, lists and more lists. August is a list season in our home. Time for those Letters Of Intent to Homeschool for the state to be sent, time to look at course offerings, events and activities for the coming fall, time to put-by all the fresh veggies and berries and fruit, time to clean and prepare meals for family gatherings and time to organize for our trip to the Northeast Unschooling Conference, next week. The constant list-making helps us keep track of all the good and important things needing done this month.



While the lists help keep us organized and absolutely save us time, they don't provide extra hours in any given day, unfortunately. Everyday I have write a blog post on the list, but that doesn't mean I've been able to check it off everyday. It's certainly not for a lack of things to write about. I have however, been putting the bulk of my blogging time towards a new endeavor for the last month, and that has been keeping me pretty busy. The Maine Unschooling Network, with all its accompanying social media feeds, links and activities has been time intensive, but so far it has been well-received and I am hopeful that it will remain a positive resource for the Maine whole-life learning community. In conjunction with the MEUNetwork blog, Alex has designed a course (and its accompanying blog)for unschoolers called Introduction to the Holocaust that he will be offering this fall, which we are all very excited about.

Though the Maine Unschooling Network is only about a month old, the
Teen Meet-Ups have been very successful. Teens (and pre-teens 11-12) are under served within the home/unschooling community all too often, so my hope is that by organizing gatherings and enrichment opportunities, while reaching out to already existing offerings, like the fabulous Portland Public Library's Teen Zone, teens, like Olivia and Adam, will benefit. That has already been the case, certainly, and Olivia has enjoyed the open mic nights. During the meet-ups, Adam and Olivia have met many people, attended a pool party, and this Tuesday, the group of teens did some movie- making.



Like I said, there has been plenty to write about, it's just finding enough hours in the day to get to it.

We have family here on Sunday (cooking, cleaning, garden), then we prepare in earnest for the NEUConference. We're so looking forward to the conference, our first, as not only do we get to hang with other unschooling families from all over the world for four days, we also get to meet in real life, so many that we've become friends with via the interwebs, ie, see list of other unschooling bloggers on this blog's sidebar--yeah, a lot of those people. So yes, very excited for the conference.



So we're making those lists, and checking them twenty times. We're checking the calendar, stretching our comfort zones, learning new things, signing up, checking in, and showing up. In between, I hope to find enough hours to get to this blog, but if I don't, as often as I'd wish, you at least know why. And it's all good. And right now, the cleaning list beckons. To my wish list, I'm adding an extra six hours in the day.

2 comments:

  1. Always pleased to meet someone who enjoys a good list (or two) as much as I do. How could people live without lists? Hi from up the coast in Topsham.

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  2. wow.
    reading that left me exhausted, I can only imagine living it! but a good kind of exhausted, you know?!
    Once again I'm wishing we lived close by, so that my 14 and 11 year old could hang out with yours while we did our unschooling mama thing :)

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