This August we are having our first annual screen free month. Our only form of communication with the outside world will be in phone calls, snail mail, or good old fashioned visiting.

We have long talked about cutting back on screens, which is hard in our house.

I grew up on a farm in the middle of the woods in a teeny tiny township in Maine. From ages 7-10 we had no electricity, we had an outhouse, our dirt driveway was almost a mile long and in the late winter and early spring we had to leave our car at the mailbox at the end of the driveway. We either walked to the car from the house or vice versa or sometimes we would take the horse and wagon.

Even when the poles came in and we had running water and an indoor toilet, we still didn’t watch much tv. We had the option to, but when your limited to three channels, books and imagination just seem better.

My husband grew up with video games and cable tv and went to school for video game design and is now a software engineer. So of course he is into electronics, it seems to be the norm to have TVs and video games, computers and iPads in the house. But even a little can be too much.

So folks, we are going on a break as I said before. I’ve printed off all the patterns that I will probably not get to, but feel like I might at some point be kicking myself in the butt for not finishing.

Some already started

And some almost finished

We have books, animals and woods to keep us busy. We have homeschool field trips lined up, our annual summer trip to Santa’s village, and camping to look forward to.

The sky will be our television, with it’s glistening stars. The sounds of nature or one of the instruments in the house will bring us our music.

We have plenty of canning that will be happening this month as everything grows in.

I am excited to see how this experiment goes.

See you in a month folks!