This is the last week before school starts again, and I should be singing that song “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” but I’m dealing with the “summer goals” guilt. What happened to all those educational things I was going to do with my kids this summer? The daily homework pages to keep up their math and writing skills? The many books we were going to read together? The cooking lessons I was going to give them (LOL, the world’s worst cook teaching her children)? The stargazing we were going to do, followed up by reading the mythology behind the constellations? The daily walks we were going to take to exercise both us and the dogs? The artistic moments we were going to spend sketching together (which is at least more up my alley than cooking)?
Truth to be told we did a couple of those things a couple of times–but we never reached that magic threshhold that makes them habitual. The kids logged far more time on Runescape than I intended them to, because when push comes to shove, when it was 95 degrees plus outside, I couldn’t think of anything better for them to do…especially when I wanted to sneak in a nap. Okay, my goals were probably a little too ambitious. So, can I count it as a success that we read “Ranger’s Apprentice”, baked cookies one afternoon, and walked the dogs an average of once a week? Does watching the movie “School of Rock” count as educational fare? How do I know what grade we earned for this summer?
I guess I’ll find out in the next week, when my kids do their annual “What I did on my summer vacation” essay. Or maybe the grade will come 10 years from now, when we reminisce around the dinner table and one of them says, “do you remember the summer when…?”
