Summer

We take the month of June off. This year we will be out by Memorial Day, so we will have an extra week off, and then we likely won’t start back until after July 4, so it will total to 6 weeks. My oldest will be going to church camp in July, so I will let my younger children off that week, and we may plan some fun activities and play dates.

During the summer we typically do summer reading and continue math. We will have swim lessons, VBS, and music camp, so it will be a busy break. We did not take a spring vacation, so we may go somewhere for a few days in June. I have also been wanting to try Geocaching.

I often think of year round schooling and taking off whenever I want, but realistically it just doesn’t work as well for us.  We will “finish up” early June. The summer schedule will consist of math several days a week, reading daily, and interest driven things like extra science readings, learning a new handicraft, volunteer work, horse camp, etc…

I have teens now. The oldest wants to work a lot this summer to make some money and he does Patriot Academy and a few other political things associated with that. He may try a college online class this summer just to get his feet wet.  My teen daughter will lifeguard part time at our swim club. My teen daughter and next youngest daughter are serious ballet students.  They have 5 weeks of ballet intensives- 4 days per week-4.5 to 6.5 hours a day! They love it.

Add in visiting family, beach trips, major yard and garden work and there is a full summer. I agree that as they get older, their summers become rather packed.  But it’s all good.  It’s education of a different kind.  It works for us.

Because of sports and other activities only available in the summer, we take most of the summer off, but I do like to squeeze some school work in in August.

We’ll start our summer break when the public school in our neighborhood gets out, and take about 5 weeks completely off. During this time, I’ll continue reading to my younger kids and having them read to me, but won’t ask my older kids to do anything other than read in the morning or at bedtime. Two of my kids will be attending a ballet intensive for these 5 weeks, and we’ve scheduled summer camps for the other big kids and daily swimming lessons for the younger ones to coincide.

Once the kids have finished ballet, camp and swimming, we’ll switch to doing “morning school” for the next 4-5 weeks. I plan to cover math, English and one fun topic that they’re interested in (I’m thinking amphibians & reptiles for the little kids, the brain/psychology for the the middle ones, and my high schoolers want to get a head start on physics). If my teenagers end up working, or if sports schedules interfere, we’ll cut our “morning school” down to just the younger kids, just an hour or so, or just a couple days a week. I like starting the school year in September feeling like we’re “ahead”, but if that doesn’t happen, it’s not the end of the world. 🙂

Claire, your trip sounds amazing! That will be a wonderful education and rest at the same time! I concur with you completely – I, too, am sick of all things homeschool and want a long break! We will keep a few things going, but even so, it will be a huge break for us. Next summer I plan to have nothing going if at all possible.

I think taking breaks is an essential thing to help us stay somewhat sane. God gave us a weekly model of a break from the norm. Whether it works to take a day here and there, a week every 6 or so, or a stretch in warm weather is up to the individual family.  Whatever works to help us keep sane.  I find that when I am getting grumpy and overwhelmed it is because I didn’t give myself a break when I needed to do so. I don’t know how Europeans manage to take the extended “holiday” times that they do, but I wish we Americans could figure it out. And the Latin countries idea of the siesta is beautiful.  We could all stand to learn how to refresh. I am preaching to myself here!