Seasonal Learning through Seasonal Living?

When I started that last post about Seasonal Schooling, I was thinking about it in a "Ehh, it's good enough" sort of way. And school done good enough with joy and real love of learning is preferable to done "perfectly" but with anxiety and stress. So I stand by that. But recently, I've been thinking of this idea of seasonal schooling as perhaps actually by my ideal.

Let's think for a second. I really do want caring and learning to be integrated into my life and my children's lives for the long haul. And we live seasonally. Or at least I think we should.

Modern society does certainly try to manipulate how we interact with the seasons. Sometimes it shifts them. I'm looking at you Christmas decorations that are out before Halloween! Or pumpkin spice everything when we are all still wearing shorts. I understand some of the "why" of this commercially but I still actively fight again it. I don't want to always be feeling like the next season's grass is greener. Rushed through life.

It's August. We are doing school like we have since beginning of July, but its clearly still summer in our house. We wake up from naps and go sit in the blow-up baby pool outside. My kids are barefoot the majority of the time and when we go somewhere, they ask if they can bring there shoes in the car so they don't have to put them on until last second before the car parks. We're eating watermelon by the ton. So don't try to convince me my kids need a whole new wardrobe with sweatshirts and jeans yet target ads! No! Chances are they'll all have a big growth spurt in the next month and then where will I be? And I believe I've ranted enough about the difference between Advent and Christmas before that I won't get into it again.

Sometimes we don't just shift the seasons, we try to eliminate them altogether. We eat too much of the same foods all year round because we don't rely on local sources enough (yes, that we includes me. I'm guilty although I'm trying to change when time and finances allow). We keep our houses the same temperature all year round. That is something I've decided to fight against. This year we've kept our house at 78 during the day (and a nice cool 77 at night) all summer and try to keep the windows open and AC off until the afternoon. I thought it would be hard but I love it. It makes getting us all outside easier because it's not such a shock to our systems. And frankly, because being outside with a breeze in the 80s is normally just as comfortable if not more so than 78 inside with no breeze. I'm sure I'll struggle with this more in the winter but I will be attempting to keep our thermostat set at a low temperature this winter as well. For more fun temperature regulation info, check out Katy Bowman's blog. This post has some. But basically - temperature regulation is healthy for your body!

So that idea has been one I've prioritized when it came to my faith and eating and isolated topics for a while but I guess I just hadn't thought about it as a whole way of life.  There's a rhythm to life which involves seasons. And if  living seasonally is what I think is ideal and education is a life, then educating seasonally makes sense as well.  Now beyond what I wrote in my last post on this topic, I'm not sure how that plays out in a practical way. But it's another idea I'm going to be pondering for a while.