#46 Being a slave to the school calendar...
In our area, we have reached the doldrums of summer. So, even though school's won't start up for a couple more weeks, my kids have been doing lots of school stuff, to stave off boredom (yes, my kids will drag out a math workbook as a solution to boredom 
). Right about the same time kids go back to school, the weather will be beautifully cool, and the parks will be empty, and we will take a break from formal school stuff and spend lots of time outside again. What a shame it would be if I told my kids they couldn't do school work when they wanted to, and forced them to stay inside later to do the work they wanted to do when the weather was lousy!
School calendars are based teacher contracts, bus schedules, and a million other bureaucratic details. While there's some attraction to taking advantage of the "back to school" momentum around us, we aren't obligated to go along with these thigs if we don't want to.
