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The top three photos of our youngest are candid ones I took last week at the park while waiting for the other kids to arrive. I love how homeschool kids play, and even in the midst of writing college application essays and doing some intense coursework, this park time is scheduled in as sacrosanct.
Not only social time, it is a time to be loud, blow off steam, roughhouse, and generally physically wear oneself out. They usually play a vigorous game of capture the flag, and I love the range of ages involved. As a senior, our daughter is obviously among the oldest, but for the rest of her homeschooling career she was not.
There are often 40 kids there for this informal unstructured play time. The scene is self monitoring with all of the kids participating equally and they drum out their own sense of fairness. The kids accommodate each other beautifully, their rules morph to take in special needs, and I’ve seen the littlest kids as captains of the teams as well as the oldest. I also love how the boys and girls all still play together as a huge happy family of brothers and sisters.
You can also note in these photos that our youngest now has her braces off; we are celebrating being done with orthodontics!
The last photo is a more formal one taken last month when our youngest daughter was visiting a college campus for an interview.
This last year of our last child at home is going fast and I am treasuring every moment!
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