Grade levels?

Another of our nuances. We never keep track of grade levels. Since the older kids were just 15 months apart we combined just about every subject and we never classified them as 1st grade or 6th grade or whatever. When they were asked what grade they were in.....they would get the deer in the headlight stare. Maybe that's why grandparents thought we weren't really educating them because they didn't know what grade they were in? hmmmmm....something to think about.

Even now the whole " what grade are you in " is elusive to them. It is less of a graduation and more of a transition to them.

I don't think well in grades. I think more in ages and stages. We don't start a "new" year every September. We start and finish subjects at all times of the year. Some subjects were more " fluid" for us. History/Math were continuous subjects never really having an ending point. We go through the year taking breaks when we needed them, when family came to visit, and for holidays.

Our favorite break of the year was the week of the first cold front. We love to catch the first cold front after a long hot summer. We head to the park get all hot and sweaty and just wait for that first blast of cold air to hit us! We usually made it back home layered with sweats over our shorts. We have the fondest family memories catching the cold front. We then spend the next week hitting every park and trail that we haven't visited since July because of the triple digit heat index.

It felt a little strange to think of this year being "kindergarten" for Sam. I'm not sure why the change in my mindset or maybe it was just a way for me to signal the change from young adults' to young children's education. I always kept a notebook going called the "game plan" that I kept a running tally of what we have done, what we could do and what we should do. I couldn't fit Sam's plan into the older kids' path so I had to start a new one . I had to call it something so I reverted back to the traditional terminology and called it his Kindergarten plan. I'm curious to see if I continue and call it 1st grade next year.