January

In homeschool circles, January is a dreaded month. Of course if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, from what I hear it's the beginning of the new school year so there's lots of excitement over new books, new classes, etc. going on there. Up here in the cold north, Christmas is over and it's a long stretch of cold, dark days before there's another long break. It's more of the same (usually) as far as school goes, nothing new or exciting.

I usually don't mind January too much. It's good to get back to a schedule after a week plus off for Christmas. We're pretty busy in January, trying to get to the ski slopes for some winter fun so the month seems to go by pretty quickly. Once January is done, for the last couple of years, we have Christmas with Bob's family to look forward to in mid-February and the girls and I take our annual vacation to visit his sister in New Hampshire at the end of the month.

I think it's actually March that I don't like so much. Our fun vacation is over, ski/snowboard time is pretty much done, and it becomes a long slog for us to get through March and into April. We'll take a day off here and there but don't usually take a spring break. The plus side of that is finishing early - usually by the end of May or early June - but the downside is the long time between our February vacation and the end of school. At least by mid-April the weather gets really nice and school can be done on the deck or at least with the windows open (one daughter finds doing school outside very distracting).