What emotions do you feel when you think about the school year coming up?

Different emotions can kind of muddle together in our minds, depending on where we are in our homeschool journeys.

But what we want to do is have a discussion today about how we can set ourselves up for a great school year,

how we can get our minds in the game to approach this school year with peace,

with hope, with joy, and with love.

Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast.

I'm Sonia Schaefer.

Joining me today is my friend Amber O'Neill Johnston. Amber, so good to have

you back. Thank you. Always a pleasure. We want to talk about setting ourselves up for a great

school year. And it's kind of a two-edged sword in my mind. It's like we want to enter it with

enthusiasm and anticipation and here's all the

great things that are going to happen. But we also need to keep a realistic mindset as well.

Definitely. I think one of the first things I think about right now, and whenever I'm thinking

of how to start my school year or what my plans are to make sure that

we're ready to start. So I think in past years, I would often feel pressure to start when people

around me were starting. And inside, I would think we're not ready. And I would jump on board and

then feel like we were scrambling the whole year. So I've since learned to just stop and pause, get set up, and

prepared with my planning, make sure that my entire family is rested and ready to enter in,

no matter when that is. And usually for us, it's right after Labor Day. Yeah. And it seems like

school years are starting sooner and sooner and sooner these days. I don't know. It feels that way to you, but it seems like school years are starting sooner and sooner and sooner these days.

I don't know.

It feels that way to you, but it feels like it's creeping on me.

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