summer schedules?

We try to get a bit of school done in the mornings.  Usually Math, grammar/LA, and a read aloud.  We also usually alternate science and history, one subject per day.   Our “light school” is usually about a hour each day.

Sometimes we do this in the afternoon when it’s too hot to do much else or in past summers when my DD had morning gymnastics practices.  For extras, we do things like ride bikes, library programs, park visits, fishing, swimming, gardening, yardwork, and going for ice cream (or eating Popsicles in the yard).

When we lived in St. Louis, it would be so hot & humid that we did park trips early in the morning and spent the rest of the day indoors!

Kim, that amount of material doesn’t seem like it should be taking all day, unless you are taking lots of breaks.  We set a timer for copywork, so it’s only 5 minutes of writing.  We keep our history & science lessons pretty short, maybe 20 minutes or less.  Adding your curriculum up, it seems like it shouldn’t be taking much  more than an hour of actual school time.  Have you tried setting a timer for each subject?  It can really help you see where time is being used up.

For us, I call it “light school” because I usually keep things more relaxed and fun.  We pare down to the essentials that didn’t get finished, but I’d like to finish.   So basically we drop most of our “extras” and any curriculum that isn’t working for us, making the day lighter.  Our regular days would have more fine arts, more language arts, and probably longer history & science lessons.

My light day probably does look much like your regular day!  When I had just younger DC, we’d often finish in 1-2 hours (which were often spread throughout the day).