Summer Coming to a Close

This year has been a little different for me.  Normally, my summer ends slowly.  By that I mean that once August hits, I'm sitting in my classroom, decorating, creating activities, and trying to think of the best ways to help my 140+ students to have the best year they can.  I would go up to the school maybe a week or two before we had to actually report back to ease my way back into routine.  

Ignore my messy desk!!  ;)

Fast-forward to this summer.  Since I'm staying home with my kids now and we're homeschooling, I haven't felt that end to my summer yet.  I have my kids with me 24/7 so there's no time to walk away and plan.  They are constantly there!  (Not that I'm complaining - I promise you!)  It's hard to have that transition like I've had in the past.

So the answer to my dilemma?  Well, go decorate a classroom!  Silly, I know.  But it worked!  We changed one of our kids bedrooms into a playroom/classroom at the beginning of the summer as a suggestion from a friend.  

Our oldest is twice-gifted.  He was diagnosed at 3.5 years as mild/moderate autistic and had a list long of other diagnoses to go with it.  He has attended a wonderful daycare/preschool for the past 3 years that has helped him along in his journey to where he is today.  His developmental pediatrician even said at one time he didn't show the typical autistic tendencies anymore and she would even go out on a limb and say he probably wouldn't receive a diagnosis of autistic if he were to be evaluated again.  (Praise God!)  But a problem we have is routine.  When we first started talking to Monkey about the idea of homeschooling, he said he had to go to school - we couldn't do it at home - because school is a different place than home.  I could see his point, given his past three years of going to a school.  So our wonderful friend suggested making a spot for school.  A place in our home that was dedicated to only school, and could look like school.  A place where we could walk in for school during the day, and shut the door to school when we were done.  So, we made a bedroom into the school room.  

And that suggestion was also the answer to my problem.  I've spent the last week decorating our new classroom, just as I would be doing if I were still teaching at the middle school.  The great thing was I could use most of the things that I used in my old classroom to help decorate the new one!  But now, instead of having equations, angles, and slope on my walls - it's replaced with numbers, colors, and ABCs.  

Let the school year begin!