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Anyone else taking the summer off?
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I have figured up our days and I think if we do five days a week for the next few months we will have our 180 school days done by the end of the first week of June. We had been doing four days a week but am finding the need for a good long break just to lay back and enjoy my summer for atleast two months. I don’t want us to get lazy during the summer but I think we need it being we are finishing up our first year of homeschooling. Im sure we will still be doing alot of unstructured schooling during the summer months with lots of nature time, gardening, playing outdoors and just time to BE! Anyone else taking the summer off? Oh will still be doing preschool work with my three year old as soon as I get it together! Also….the days that you do field trips, etc do you count them as a school day? The public school system does!
I absolutely count them as school days – I even made a personal resource in the Organizer labeled “Field Trips” with a bunch of blank divisions. Then as we do things – especially spur of the moment things – I simply go in mark one done, adding in the notes section details of the day.
We do take a good break in the summer – I garden and can meals for the coming year during the summer and it can be a long process. =) If I thought I was schooling on top of that, I’d have a nervous breakdown! LOL
I have always said in the past that we will work most of the summer and we never do as much as I intended. This summer I think we may just do one thing like math which requires little prep for me and leave it at that. I hate to go long periods with absolutely no school or we seem to get out of the habit and have ahard time getting back into it. But I also want to be able to go to the beach at every opportunity.
Nebby
We count field trips too!
We will actually take part of the summer off this year because I’m having a baby then. Last year we took a break for about 4 weeks in summer (which for us is a really long break…LOL). The biggest drawback to taking several months off at my house is the kids thrive on the routine of school and I refuse to fill our summer with running around to take up it’s place (too many little ones to haul with 7 under 12). So then we end up with too much free time and nobody is happy.
We tend to do our summer school in the sticky hot afternoons when it’s not worth being outside.
My concern is that we will get bored after the summer break looses it’s niceness! We may just take off a month….will have to wait and see. We are planning a trip to the Creation Museum in June, going to Canada in October so we will have to take some time off then as well. Also, planning a trip to Florida next December so I will really have to watch how much time we take off. Having a three year old makes it hard to go alot but my seven year old is feeling the need to do alot of outside activities. It gets extrememly hot here in the south so will probally do alot of swimming and spending time at the beach and lake!
Well… just because we take the summer off most school subjects, doesn’t mean that we arn’t doing anything. It is very apparent behavior wise and attitude wise when we take too much down time. So summer vacation still means chores and structure – just not school structure per se.
We add in extra play time with friends, additional trips to parks, museums and the zoo. I actually count those as summer school for my records, but I can’t just let them loose for three months. Yikes!! lol This is also a great time to work on handicrafts and life skills (think chore training) that seem to not be taught as well in the “thick of it all” during school.
Amen to sheraz! We are doing homeschool chore training this summer. Not sure if I’d call it a bootcamp, but my kids might think it is! 🙂
Summer is when we switch chores and train kids for new chores every year too! The kids don’t rotate through different chores weekly, they get responsibilities for an entire year. It has worked great for us!
It’s always interesting to see what other families choose. This was even a topic of conversation in Charlotte Mason’s time! Charlotte and PMEU head-masters thought the holiday breaks were special but advocated providing a “multiplicity of interests” rather than merely amusing our children. If you’d like to see my articles from long ago, they can be found here:
http://barefootvoyage.blogspot.com/2009/06/summer-break-and-holiday-schedules.html
http://barefootvoyage.blogspot.com/2009/06/summer-break-suitable-ideas.html
Personally, we do take an 8-week break. During that time some of their “interests” include putting their portfolios together from the preceding school year and raising up new batches of chicks. We also pick a specific habit to work on as well.
Richele
Our routine changes a bit due to canning/preserving all the wonderful vegetables and fruits from our garden. But, these are wonderful ways to practice reading, narration, math, nature study, and even art, music, and foreign language. So, we don’t take off from learning, just from the more formal routine we follow the rest of the year. Had we a slide like that pictured in Richelle’s blog post, we’d certainly have serious holiday days, too. ;0)
Becca<><
Sheraz,
It will be a great time for me to focus on habit training, and definitely those things I love about charlotte masons method that get squeezed out! I definitely will be counting our outings and field trips this summer as school days. Need to work on the chore thing and our house needs some attention in certain areas! Anyone want to paint a house?
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