summer

[Guest Barb B]

What is summer like for your homeschool? No school, school year round, part time? Just wondering. . . .

 

Barb

[mommy4ever]

This is our first year of homeschooling, but I am intending to work through the summer. It will be lighter, but I want to keep moving forward, so we don't lose what ground we have gained. Mostly reading and math, but we are doing plants and insects through the summer as we have a ready supply :lol: Come fall, we'll dial it up a bit and be more thorough.

[truebluexf]

My kids will be going to day camp at the Y...so we all get a nice break in the summer and the kids get the chance to be super busy and branch out a little. DD1 will have half days, DS gets full due to their ages. I plan on doing Singapore CWP with DS1 throughout the summer to keep skills up (maybe a page a day, or just a few a week), and maybe a little bit of WWE. I always enjoyed a summer vacation as a child and want them to have that too. Plus, the camp time gives me a little break to take care of me and my projects, and alone time with the youngest. :)

[Wyndie]

In the past we always took the summer off but this summer we will be doing 2x a week school instead. I found the kids lost too many basic skills and we spent more time at the beginning of the year playing "review and catch up" than I'd like. PLUS I need the structure or I will drag my feet about getting back into it. I love my summer break to the point that I don't want to end it. It's best for me personally to just do light work rather than a total break. :D

 

ETA: we will be doing just basics during the summer although the kids are clamoring for a human body study so we'll probably throw that in too. Mostly just keeping them from losing reading, spelling and math skills.

Edited May 12, 2010 by Wyndie

[KIN]

We will be doing some type of school this summer. I'm going back and forth between alternating days with math and Latin just to ease up our daily schedule the rest of the year *or* doing art and music, things that I rarely get to in the school year. Either way, I'm going to have a lighter school year next year! I think spreading my days out throughout the year is one way to do that!

[Orthodox6]

One son attends a year-round outside school. He has breaks at the most annoying times. Our only remaining homeschooler also goes to school year-round. As she completes a subject's "grade level", the days ease up. She'll take off a week for church camp, and at least a week off before another son's wedding in August. In order to fit in swimming a few times per week, we'll turn a blind eye to school occasionally.

[2cents]

Year-round but in summer we do more fun stuff. This summer we're doing Hogwarts Summer School again since they loved it last year. We're also going to do the Forensics program from Duke TIP. We'll also keep up with math and Spanish. We'll do lots of swimming and playing outside too. :)

[Brindee]

When the kids were young we'd basically school year round, with a lighter summer schedule because of trips and things. As they got older and had lots of neighborhood friends, it was hard to keep up a summer schedule, so for awhile we didn't do anything all summer. Now we're back to do a little during the summer.

 

This summer ds 18 will be planning for his sophomore year of college in Montemorelos, Mexico! There will be lots of leg-work for that! ds16 will be taking driver's training (right, he hasn't taken it yet, fine with me to start him later! :D ) and looking for a job. I may have him go through a money management course. dd will be doing Algebra 1 and some writing lessons to prepare her for her 9th grade curriculum. She'll work on those 2-3 days a week. Then dig into a couple of her electives in July and get them completed as soon as she can so her load won't be as heavy the whole school year.

 

That said, we're taking most of June off, though dd may do a lesson or two of math a week during that time.

 

D

[robsiew]

We are just finishing our 2nd year so not much experience. We took all last summer off, but I won't do that again. We will take most of June off (first 3 weeks) and then school 3 days a week, pretty normal schedule. If it gets to be too much we'll take a week or so off here or there, but I'd like to keep somewhat of a routine. It took us until October to get back into routine last year... I don't want to have to deal with that.

 

That being said, we are all ready for a BREAK!! We're pushing through another couple weeks until the end of May... then we'll all be glad to be done for a few weeks!

[lionfamily1999]

We take a longer vacation in July, but the rest of the summer is business as usual. Andrew starts 4th grade in June and Luke...... well, I'm going to try to start "real" Pre-K with him in August. Realistically, Luke will probably still get the same amount of class time he gets now :p

 

ETA, I may have two more students this summer. My sister is starting to dread summer and wants to start trading kids. She'll take the littles and I'll take the olders. I'm supposed to keep them up-to-par, but not get them too far ahead... yeah, right.

[m0mmaBuck]

This is my first year of hs'ing. My plan is to continue with daily reading as well as light (10-20 mins each) math and LA's 3-5 days/wk so we don't lose too much ground. He will also have Cub Scout Resident camp, Bible camp, 2 weeks of Science camp, and a 2 week family vacation to WI thrown in.

[naturelovinmama]

We have always taken the summers off. My kids like to be off when their school friends are off and frankly I love having an end and then a break. My daughter will be doing Apologia's Exploring Creation with General Science this summer however, because we kind of threw together our own science for middle school and then realized we were seriously lacking in science knowledge and unprepared for Physical Science (which she will be taking in a coop in the fall). She will also have gymnastics 3 1/2 hours every weekday, Gymnastics camp for a week, and a friend visiting from out-of-state for a week. My son will have swim lessons and soccer camp. We live in the South, and I have to admit that although we take summers off, usually we end up starting back early because it's too hot to do much else.

 

Jackie

[Moniksca]

We took our first summer off and I wasn't happy with that so this year we'll have some light work through the summer. We'll continue with grammar, finish our french program, art, and music. Since we didn't always get to those subjects during the year. We'll continue to read and do math games to keep up those skills.

[Tonia]

We'll be doing a bit of light work - mostly math and science.

[Guest Barb B]

Love all the varying answers! We take off summer but: each kid is required to read; also we do about 2 lessons per week in math. I, like some I read, am thinking (hoping) to due more art and music this summer as those are the first to go. I have artistic pursuits for my soon to be 2nd and 7th graders. Music will be "music master's series" listening along with a book/cd "the story of the orchestra. Then it is free time (limits on tx and video games though), swimming, play . . . The key for me is to some how schedule the school type work (especially math) or it just won't get done.

 

Oh - ds 2nd wants to do Magic School Bus Human body kit we have.

 

So, any hints as to how more free time and scheduling lite school work fits?

 

Barb

[bnbacademy]

We are completing our 4th year of homeschooling. I plan (and hoping for kid cooperation!) to do science this summer. I just could not seem to fit my favorite subject in and do it justice, this past year. Sadly, I am even giving up Coop next year, mainly because I feel that not enough was accomplished with a 4-day school schedule and part-time work schedule. I finally had to admit that I am NOT superhuman!

[Melenie]

We plan to do school 4 days a week and take one day off to hang at the pool with friends. DD6 has VBS one week and we will take one more week off with DH if he can take the time off work.

 

I like doing school during the summer, it's too hot to be outside unless we are in the pool. We get most of our work done during the summer and winter months when it is too hot or cold to be outside.

 

Summer is also our time for reviewing memory work from past years. We review skip counting and other math facts, states and capitals and what ever else we need to work on.

[TandLMommy28]

We signed up for daily swim lessons at the local pool for most of the summer. We are taking a two week vacation from the midwest to the east coast with stops along the way at a few amusement parks, Boston and NYC.

 

Otherwise, we will be doing as much of our science as we can over the summer. We'll be doing 1st grade science so I'm hoping to do all of our animal unit before the regular school year begins. Science in the summer just makes more sense to me--go outside for messy experiments, better chance to observe cool plants and animals, etc.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

We continue with some things, not others. We stop spelling, vocabulary, school reading (my kids always read for fun though because they love it). We always do math (even on weeks off during the school year) but not the normal curriculum math. My oldest does life of fred, and we also got her survival math for this summer. She will finish her All American History (we didnt get that until November) and she will start MOH 2 if it ever comes (we ordered that 3 weeks ago:glare:) And we do science-- but different than what we do through the school year. We are going to be doing Signs And Seasons:Classical Astronomy this summer.

 

My second grader will continue with handwriting, math (she will do singapore 2 intensive practice and CWP- we save those for the summer) she will do SOTW 2 after we finish Agustus Caesars world (we are doing that between SOTW 1&2) She will do Classical Astronomy with us, but I am not sure how much she will understand and remember, but she will do it again when she is older.

 

Now that being said, we alternate-- we do math daily, then one day history, another science. My 2nd grader will do a handwriting lesson everyday. And we will do the obvious summer stuff we can not do during the winter, nature notebooking in the Black Hills National Forest, Go rock climbing and learn about that. That sort of thing. We have some astronomy projects we are going to do from Apologia's Astronomy book we did this year. Lots of hands on fun field trip stuff!

[2_girls_mommy]

We take a light 8 weeks break. We do formal school one day a week. This year it will consist of a chapter of SOTW and projects and a grade level workbook for each girl to practice math and letters, etc. Last year we did SOTW and science. But this year I am happy with what we have covered in science, and do not feel the need to keep it up formally. We will still read and color and do hikes and nature related things.

 

We do several summer reading programs, so reading goes on daily. One of the reading programs is a zoo storytime, so we will spend one morning a week at the zoo. We volunteer at a food pantry one day a week one month. We have a week of VBS in July, and a 2 week daily swim lesson session. We will do a weekend church camp once. And we will have the workbooks to do in the car for long car rides to visit Grandma. (plus books on C.D. and classical music ) I did notice a slowdown in dd's math facts recall this past fall. So I may do flashcard practice occasionally with her. Not too much with the 5 yr old yet. She is still little. A page or two in her K wkbk will be fine for now. Add in the fact that everyone in our house has a summer bday and the 4th of July, and you can see that we won't have time for much else!

[Mama2Three]

For us, an hour or so most mornings goes a long way to honing skills. We are moving this summer, but I hope to keep it up to provide structure for the kids and me. For my DS who attends ps, summer gives us a longer chunk of time to spend on lesson and cover everything how I want to without having to hurry up for the bus. In some ways its more intense than what we do during the school year, but in other ways it's more relaxed because we're not so rushed. Besides math and writing, I plan to do more work in spelling and hope to do some MFW K fun science that we missed.

Edited May 12, 2010 by Mama2Three

[my2boysteacher]

Last summer we did workboxes with fun learning activities as their 'work'. We used math games such as River Crossing and Tipover, math bingo, weighted numbers and a scale. For language arts activities were bananagrams, scrabble, etc. We'll probably do something similar this summer along with our daily quiet reading.

[JudoMom]

Our last "normal" day will be May 26. The following week will be test prep. The rest of June the older boys will do Math & Latin, my middle boy will drill math facts, and my younger two will do phonics, and maybe some math.

 

We start our new year July 1. And because of an enrichment program they will be attending during the school year, we'll be doing full days, at least with my older 2. The younger 3 might get off a bit easier.

[NanceXToo]

We will be finishing up Oak Meadow's 4th grade curriculum next week. Over the summer, my 9 y/o and I will go back to doing SOTW Vol. 1, using Times Tales to see if we can get her a bit stronger on her multiplication tables, and attempting to learn Spanish with "I Can Read & Speak In Spanish" book and audio CD (as she has expressed an interest in trying to learn Spanish).

 

No other official "school stuff" though we will of course continue reading for fun and with various day trips and outings. She'll be doing a couple of weeks of art classes and attending programs at the library and that sort of thing.

[MorganClassicalPrep]

We are actually taking a break now and will start our "new year" June 1st. I'm a college student, so we take our breaks during my busy times (midterms and final exams). We'll do school all summer, take a 1-2 week break the last week of August/first week of September while I get settled in to school.

[simka2]

We will be going thru the summer with lots of breaks for swimming and camping :)

[LisaKinVA]

School, but different.

 

We will get up and start the day like every other day, but head to swimming at 9:30am.

 

After swimming and lunch, we'll do health, our reading comp exercises, math, and a game. The children each have a "summer reading challenge" book list, which they can complete or not...different rewards for different achievements. We'll also work on Latin, and continue with our Bible Study. We will drop all formal grammar, spelling and LA, drop formal history and science for the summer.

 

Plenty of time for play, and extra time at the pool.

 

We'll be back to FT school after Labor Day.

[Karen in CO]

Historically, summer at my house is spent enjoying the few months of glorious, warm weather. We are outside somewhere most of the day. We are either in our yard with the kids playing and me watching the grass grow, or we are at a park, or we have escaped town and are trying to get lost in the mountains for a few days. The kids take a week at an art day camp and a week at the zoo day camp but that is typically our only academics other than reading.

 

This summer will be different. My ds is home from college, and I have started a new job so this summer he is teaching a the girls while I get settled into work. As soon as our homeschool calendar hits 172 (the number of days required to "school"), we will start on next year. If we can bank a few weeks of school over the summer, then on the days I am freakishly busy with work, we can easily skip a day of school next year. Besides, where else do I get a live-in tutor for Japanese, French and math (his best subjects) for the easy payment of room-and-board?

 

Enjoy your summer. It is precious.

[gandpsmommy]

For us summer is about fun and extracurriculars. Dd has gymnastics practice during the day over the summer, three or four days a week. We go swimming almost everyday. Ds gets a lot of informal nature study as he likes to go to parks, nature reserves, lakes, creeks, ponds, etc. and explore, fish, hike, etc. Dd will be going to two weeks of art camp. The kids like to go to the nearby tennis courts and hit some balls, ride their bikes up and down our street, play with the neighborhood kids. We will probably take a lot of day trips to museums, the zoo, maybe a waterpark.

 

I will *try* to work on math with each child for a few minutes each day and have each child read for a few minutes each day. I keep a read-aloud going. Other than that, we don't really do formal academics in the summer.

[DarlaS]

I'm planning on implementing a loop schedule for each of my kids starting this fall. In order to ease into that, I've designed "half-loops" for summer. It works out to about 3 subjects a day, 4 days a week for my 13 yo (His is the only one done so far.). He will be alternating subjects so he does science daily (We need to finish this.), and alternates history with and grammar and composition. Math ends up about 3x a week.

[Lolly]

Summer? Swimming intensifies. Only those with year round, older swimmers will understand.:lol: The twins will be at swim practice about 5 hours a day. Often 4 hours driving back and forth. Eating. Sleeping. That is about all there is in a day.:001_huh:

[Mom_Abear]

I am planning on doing math twice a week, along with some handwriting, Mindbenders, and The Greek Alphabet Code Cracker ... to keep cobwebs from forming on our brains! ;)

 

I am also going to continue Phonics Pathways with my almost Ker, and I'm sure my older son will read every day, too.

 

Other than that, we are sleeping late, going to the beach, etc.!!

[Holly]

We'll be taking June off (VBS, then 2 week vacation) and starting in July. However we're getting a puppy in July, so I don't know how much I'll be getting done then. :eek:

[Jen+4dc]

Year-round but in summer we do more fun stuff. This summer we're doing Hogwarts Summer School again since they loved it last year. We're also going to do the Forensics program from Duke TIP. We'll also keep up with math and Spanish. We'll do lots of swimming and playing outside too. :)

 

This sounds cool! Would you care to elaborate?:D

 

My dc aren't happy about it but they know it will happen anyway: at least 30 min of free reading a day and math 2X's a week. I'm also hoping to get a lot of fun science experiments in since that's where I totally dropped the ball this school year!

[momto2Cs]

Year-round but in summer we do more fun stuff. This summer we're doing Hogwarts Summer School again since they loved it last year. We're also going to do the Forensics program from Duke TIP. We'll also keep up with math and Spanish. We'll do lots of swimming and playing outside too. :)

 

 

Okay, tell me more about this Hogwarts Summer School!

 

Our summer plans...

 

Light math, using these little books - 4 problems a day. I'm getting them to cover the grade levels we are completing so it'll be review, but will keep the concepts fresh in their minds for fall.

 

Daily reading for ds (he's going to read Ralph Mouse trilogy, in addition to books of his own choice), and reading instruction for dd. I had The Reading Lesson highly recommended to me, so she and I are going to give it a try.

 

Finish our human body using The Body Book!

[MerryAtHope]

I've been doing way too much research for next year, because I read this title as "Sumer" initially, LOL!

 

Anyway, I like to take off about 6 weeks for summer. Enough to be a good break, not so long that we get too bored or that the kids forget everything. Usually we go on a vacation or two to see family etc... Plus we start back up mid-July when it's hot & no one wants to be outside much anyway!

 

Merry :-)

[brijen97]

Last year we continued working on reading and also used a book called Summer Bridge to help keep Maddie sharp and not lose what she had learned. I'm planning on the same thing this year and also using some activities from Family Math 2.

[mama2cntrykids]

We've been done with school since mid-April (we started early). We've loosely been doing Math on Tues and Thurs. I say loosely because sometimes I honestly forget, lol. I plan on starting Nature Walks/Journaling/Exploration soon, but we're moving in a month so, not sure what that's going to look like right now.

[MissKNG]

We school year round but follow the public school calendar for "grade level". This summer we are going to have fun with MEP 1A, C-rods, AL Abacus and Peak With Books. Along with all the outside fun summer allows!

[MissKNG]

 

Daily reading for ds (he's going to read Ralph Mouse trilogy, in addition to books of his own choice), and reading instruction for dd.

 

I'm reading the Ralph S Mouse books aloud to my big girl and they are such a hit! We are reading the second one right now!!

[mommyofthree]

This will be our fifth year homeschooling. I've finally figured it out that we cannot break for the entire summer. I plan to do MCT, MM and lots and lots of reading.

[ElizabethB]

Math games a few times a week so all the math does not jump out of the brain, it was a lot of work getting it in there, no need for it to hop out over the summer (that happened the first summer, last summer we did math games, that worked well.)

[patchfire]

We've finished our formal schoolwork for the year, as well as our required number of days for the state - yay! Next week, the oldest has one lesson in Caesar's English I (to finish the book), one lesson in Paragraph Town (to finish the book), and end of the year testing (which she thinks is fun). Many weeks of the summer, she has various camps, but except for the week of resident camp, she's still required to do math daily and read daily. The reading is her choice, aside from four specific books, but she also knows I'm looking to see that she's reading new stuff, not just re-reading old favorites to the exclusion of finding new favorites!

 

She did want to take math to resident camp, but I told her no. :lol:

 

Ds will still be doing his stuff, which takes us less than an hour a day total, anyway. :)

[mamato4girls]

We are finishing our 2nd full year of homeschooling. Last year we took the Summer off, not doing that again. I am ready for a break, but we will break for a week after our "formal" year is done. And then we will do Math and History 3 times a week, with leisure reading everyday.

[mcconnellboys]

No formal school. We do keep up math skills, but not with any sort of regularity. Lots of camps and other summer activities. Piano lessons continue......