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what "school" do you do in the summer?
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For those of you that do a more traditional school year…
What do you do “school wise” in the summer? What kind of schedule do you keep?
Last summer was not acceptable to me. Too much unproductive time and too much bickering and “I’m bored” and too much of mom driving kids hither and yon and not getting my projects done. I still want to have some break and have an official start in Sept. but I want a schedule this summer of readings,math, foreign language, some purposeful “field trips”, and better scheduled time for projects both for the house and for the individual child.
Any suggestions?
Scripture Memory & Bible Study
Math
Spelling
Reading
Read Alouds
any stray leftovers from the plans that haven’t been completed
In that order, Scripture and Bible Study at breakfast. Chores. Then, the rest.
We do devotion and scripture memorisation, reading and for one child one lesson of math (LOF so it is pretty short) and planning to keep doing Grammar key because we still didn’t finish.
Except when we go to camp for a week and to my moms in Canada (12 days), we drop everything than.
Pretty sure we’ll do some Math w/my 1st grader too but just because he loves it!
Scripture Memory
Math
Reading
Music
Last year I made sure some Mad Libs were laying around so that my boys could brush up on parts of speech.
Am I the only one who plans to get some academics done in the summer but never seem to get much done? We always have good intentions but somehow life gets busy with gardening, more social activities (those school kids on vacation), canning and all the projects I couldn’t get done through the school year.
This is what I’d LIKE to get done this summer.
Bible, using the Truthquest beginnings guide.
Nature study
Maybe finish up the math books
Thinking about getting back to the Diane Craft writing 8 exercises.
I’m trying to stay realistic! Hope it works.
I too have good intentions about school in summer but my garden and canning get in the way. However, this year we moved and I will only be gardening in pots and pails so I wont have near as much to do. (Right? Lol) We do have to finish history but we will be doing devotion, math, piano lessons, reading and any fun arts & crafts and projects I can find. We also will have some neat field trips and are trying to plan a trip to the creation museum.
You know, I reread the OP and realized it was directed at “traditional” year folks. We study year ’round, but scale back in summer to allow for all that canning!
We are gonna use our summer to finish up our math and history! Other than that we are gonna do alot of unschooling activities for summer!
We also struggle with school in the summer…DH has two weeks vacation, plus a week-long “working vacation” we take together. Not to mention family visiting us throughout the summer. On top of that, DD’s gymnastics practices move to the middle of the day which makes schooling difficult 2 days/week!
My plans this summer are to get scripture memory, history, and math in every day. On top of that, I’d like to get in some more writing assignments, science, and read alouds before next fall…maybe 2 or 3 days a week for these. I’d also like to add in some extras on days we don’t have as much going on.
I don’t want to miss out on our outdoors time while we have nice weather, but we are very much behind where I’d like us to be. We had our 5th child in February and didn’t get much done this year. My main goal is to get my 11yo caught up in math (or close to it) before next fall.
I usually have my kids do something like the following daily:
Devotional
30 min. reading
15 min. (at least) instrument practice
Some sort of math/critical thinking, but not our official programs
Something physical
We’re pretty laid back, but I want some sort of structure:)
Last year we did Scripture Memory and a focus on math (as my kids suddenly seemed to forget everything they ever knew….). I think we did some reading as well, but I can’t remember – it probably fell by the wayside.
For math they did a practice sheet each day and played 2 or 3 math games.
This year I plan to continue the practice sheet and 1 or 2 games. continue practicing spelling and scripture memory. And do more reading…. We will see what actually happens with camps and everything…
We only need to log 8 more days to complete our year. Then we will officially start up again the beginning of August. During these ‘off’ months, I want to keep math and reading going a couple days a week because my daughter is very weak in those areas because of her dyslexia. I will continue doing some read-alouds, just because my daughter likes when I read, and I have accumulated some books I really want to read to her. I also have some that I want to begin on personal development. We will continue to do Bible daily, and hopefully accomplish more Scripture memorization. I am not going to try to make a schedule. Days we work will depend on what we have going on during the week. Like was mentioned, if there is “I’m bored” happening, that will be the time to pull out the books:) My goal is to be outdoors more often and hopefully do much nature study as well.
I am hoping to school year round, but am planning on a 4 term year. 3 terms during the “traditional” school year to do more heavy duty history, science, etc..
For our summer term, I am going to do more of a unit study approach. My boys are 6 and almost 8, so we will do:
Math – lots of math games, Rapid Recall for math facts
Reading – practice, phonics work
Scripture Memory – keep going
Bible – We will be rereading the Jesus Storybook Bible, as well as reading God’s Names by Sally Michael
Geography – Focus on land forms, and take field trips to photograph the boys at as many local landforms as we can find.
Science/Nature Study – Two units, really. Frogs (we have tadpoles growing now, elder DS is reading the Frog and Toad books, we will put together a frog/amphibian notebook) and Earthquakes/Volcanoes (this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Good Friday earthquake in AK – a 9.2)
I see our more “formal” studies not taking more than an hour or two, and then our unit studies will be more fun, and field trips, experiments and the like. And all the rest of the time? Playing outside as much as possible, letterboxing, tending the garden, canoeing and going camping.
These are my plans, anyway.
Our summers are different each year but we always do some school (math and scriptures). This year it looks like we’ll do:
Math U See for the 7th grader and Multiplication in a Flash among other things for the oldest 4.
Devotionals (scriptures, memory work, hymns)
Projects: Oldest will work on Personal Progress, 2nd oldest will work on Cub Scouts and Faith in God, 3rd oldest will work on Faith in God.
Then lots of nature study and some literature and read alouds.
Thanks ladies.
Aimee- I hear you. I often plan for the summer and don’t follow through. However,I see that my children don’t do well with lots of unscheduled time. They do better with more structure. I used to stress about that. I had no schedule in the summer, but spent hours outside hither and yon, and did a lot of whatever to entertain myself. But I was one child, not four. And the world is sadly different today. I wouldn’t want my kids to take off on a bike and not come back for hours and not know really where they are. We could do that back in the day, but no longer.
I don’t think it is a weakness in my children so much as just that they need me to transition them better. Not to go from very structured days to nothing. A modified, skeleton schedule is probably what I am after.
Anyway, those of you that do schedule, can you share an example? I mean, do you school everyday? Do you have laater morning hours than the school year? How long of a day? How do you schedule in appointments, projects, trips and schooling?
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