I’ve been dreading summer for weeks now, but today I’m making peace with it by letting it be what it’s supposed to be: a break.
There will be no fussing with darling reading logs, Instagramming exotic vacations, or succumbing to death-by-summer bucket lists. I will not be responsible for entertaining my kids’ bored faces with “101 Summer Activities” that are bound to end with #101: Rip out your own voice boxes. No progress will be made on creative projects I’ve been wanting to tackle, and the house won’t always be clean when friends come over. We won’t be accepting every invitation to go and to do if there are times when it makes better sense to stay and to be.
Why? Because, for us, this summer isn’t for stepping up, it’s for stepping back. It’s not about lead feet, it’s about bare feet, and we will spend our days learning to cease from all the striving. There are things that can wait until September (like hearing myself think), so in the meantime I want to learn how to be okay with the unproductive, unremarkable days we will be given to host play dates and Nerf wars and sit poolside with our neighbors and red solo cups. I want to enjoy a summer that isn’t about making progress so much as it about making space—in our home and in our schedule—for the ordinary things we sped past at 95 MPH this spring. Things like time with our friends, Saturday mornings in our pajamas, dinners around the table at a reasonable hour, and a bedtime routine that includes reading together again like we used to.
Which brings me to this year’s…
DAYTIME READ ALOUD
(with daily written activities & copywork to keep brain rot at bay)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (June)
The Hobbit (July/August)
DEVOTIONS
Bake Through The Bible by Susie Bentley-Taylor & Bekah Moore
Not By Sight by John Bloom
The Priest With Dirty Clothes by R.C. Sproul
BEDTIME READ ALOUD w/ the BOYS
Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow
LANDON & EVAN
(Keeping it simple this year since I went a bit overboard last year)
Game Day for the Glory of God by Stephen Altrogge
The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop
Redwall (Book 1) by Brian Jacques
Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
Secrets According to Humphrey by Betty Birney
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Books from the Imagination Station – Adventures in Odessey Series
(Selah will be working on her sight words for 1st grade and some early reader books from the library.)
MY LIST
The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller
The Nesting Place by Myquillyn Smith
Notes from a Blue Bike by Tsh Oxenreider, Ann Voskamp
Home-Making by J.R. Miller
Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
“Come with me,’ Mom says.
To the library.
Books and summertime
go together.”
{Lisa Schroeder}