Sacred Weekends

Given the amount of work and travel that Daddy does during the week, our weekends are sacred. Many kids participate in various sports and extracurricular activities on the weekends, but for us those classes would interfere with precious weekend family time. This morning we took a hike to a rocky beach and then visited an organic farm near the lake, while this afternoon we'll all be swimming and kayaking.

There may come a time when Saturday morning soccer games seem more important than hiking and swimming, but for now we are committed to keeping our weekends free and clear of structured activities. And we're not alone. Fellow homeschool blogger, LakeMom, wrote about retaining pure, unstructured weekend family time in the post, "Thou Shalt Not Kill the Weekend."

I love this quote from Richard Louv's book, Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, which reminds me to be ever-vigilant about how we allocate our time:

"IT TAKES TIME -- loose, unstructured dreamtime-- to experience nature in a meaningful way. Unless parents are vigilant, such time becomes a scarce resource, not because they intend it to shrink, but because time is consumed by multiple, invisible forces; because our culture currently places so little value on natural play." (p.117).