I am still busily working on homeschool preparations for the coming year. I like to heavily customize and tweak our approach, and get a general idea of the theme and goals I would like us to aim for in the coming year.

Some families fly by the seat of their pants, figuring things out as they go (I've done this). Others like to pick out and implement curricula which already have everything planned out (I have done this as well). I don’t want the structure of a pre-planned curriculum, but I also find that we do need some sort of plan, goals to work towards, things to keep in mind as we go.

I did take a break for a bit today to play Valheim with my husband. I do enjoy video games, a lot. He and I met and bonded over our love of video games, 18 years ago. Playing a game together, just the two of us, is the equivalent of a date night (minus any sort of romancing).

After that, I spent some time typing up journal prompts that get cut up, folded, and mixed in a container for my 7 year old. This is how I got my daughter into writing years ago. She was resistant at first, and her angry responses to some of them are some of the funniest things I've read. Once she got the hang of it, she took off with her writing.

My son has been stealing her old journals to read (he seems to enjoy them as well) and has asked for his own.

Today, his journal arrived, and as requested, I am getting the prompts ready for him so he can do what his big sis did. He picks a random one from the bag, glues it on the page, and gets to respond. It has a fun mystery egg vibe to it, the prize being something new and interesting to think about.

I'd have to say, this is one of my favorite parts of homeschooling. You can get as wild as you like with your questions, just to see what they come up with.

P.S. in case you are curious, one of the funny responses she wrote was to the question what she would do if a bully stole her bike. She said she would go over, get her bike back, and beat him over the head with it. I think she was 7 at the time.

There are no right or wrong answers here, no judgements, just pure, creative, imaginary fun. The best kind of fun to have. Perfect timing too, because I will be starting his year with “Fortunately, The Milk” by Neil Gaiman.