Summer school

[Rachel]

If you don't school year round, what does summer school look like in your house?

 

I'm thinking daily math fact review, some sort of handwriting (maybe sending postcards to cousins), and then rotating between science and art. Those two subjects kind of fell by the wayside as our year went on. I'm guessing it would be about an hour of work per day.

 

We took last summer off completely and that wasn't good. We had too much review and difficulty getting back into a routine last fall. We are taking this week off completely, we will take off a week in June for travel, and a week in July for camp. We will also likely take a week off in August for the state fair. We definitely need some structure to our days but I don't want to do too much either. Thoughts?

 

My older kids just finished 1st and 3rd grade. I'll also have a kindergartener next year.

[extrafor6]

We do an hour in the morning...math 3 days, writing 2 days, reading every day. Playing some games and reading lots of books helps us as well. I'd love to school year round, but my kids need the break. Good luck!

[Syllieann]

We continue our school year math 3 days per week; we only do that 4x per week during the school year. Then there is something for handwriting. Last summer ods did pentime 3 and dd did copywork. This summer ods is doing pentime 4 and dd is doing pentime 2. We also ontinue our memory work in anki as the cards pop up. They generally read in bed for awhile before going to sleep so I don't really schedule reading, but if a week or so went by without them reading spontaneously I would probably schedule that in.

[coastalfam]

I'm trying to decide. We have to summer school my oldest son pretty intensively because of retention issues, but I still want it to feel like... Summer time. My plan right now is to do math Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and a language arts lesson Tuesday and Thursday--for my oldest that will be new sight word introduction, practicing his word bank and phonics sounds, etc. For my youngest it is just going to be reading an extra story, and for my middle son, we will work on spelling mainly. I will have them read everyday, and then we have a bit of science and history to finish up, but we will just do that on poor weather days, or as the kids ask for it. I know History and Science will happen one way or another as the kids lead (they love it), but the other subjects I plan to do right after breakfast and just get it done, 1 hour (okay, probably 90 minutes) maximum. I also plan on letting them each play one educational app or computer game each weekday. We will keep up our read alouds at bedtime and/or lunchtime. I also plan to teach them a chore I've put off for too long. Their own laundry! Now THAT will be and education!

[2_girls_mommy]

We usually do morning activities like go to the pool or the library storytimes or to a park. Then lunch- if a pool or park day, that often means a picnic. I start each morning by packing fruit and sandwiches and drinks in the cooler bag when doing the pool bag with towels and such. Then after lunch, everyone is pretty calm after all of that activity. Then we settle in for afternoon "summer camp." This is when we do whatever work I want done for the summer. I generally start with a read aloud and then an activity that goes with it.  I often have done this in the form of unit studies, but since mine are older this summer I don't have anything in particular like that planned. My middle schooler is going to work in her Thinking Tree journal and my high schooler has a couple of book on her reading list for summer, plus some latin and Algebra to keep working on so as to be ready for the next levels in the fall. Stopping would not be good for her. She may continue to work on writing as well. 

[Rachel]

This is helpful, thanks.

[regentrude]

We always took of a 2-3 weeks completely for travel, during which we just read a lot, wrote, visited museums, nature centers etc.

For teh rest of teh summer, we always continued some light math. I do not think taking 3 moths off math is a good idea.

[Tawlas]

This summer my oldest will be away for 4 weeks - not all in a row, but scattered through July and August.  While she's gone, I don't *think* we'll do school?  But I'm undecided.  Ideally we'd do one page of math each day (during the school year, we do a full lesson which are about 3 or 4 pages).  I'm considering a few math fact apps, especially for the middle two since they are working on multiplication facts. Maybe that will be our non-school school lol!  1/2 hour of reading whatever they want - no assigned reading.  Journal writing or story prompts daily, their choice.  I'm not expecting it to take more than an hour or so each day.  Rainy day board games and documentaries. Membership to an important provincial historical site and a visits to others nearby. This is what we did last year and it worked really well.  Also, we live on a ranch and they spend hours and hours outside each day mostly unsupervised.  So important imho - maybe more important than math apps :P

 

Oh, and read alouds.  That's not really considered school here, though, just fun family time.  We have a family-wide supper read aloud and more individual bedtime read alouds, and all my kids love audiobooks.  A little too much sometimes, if that's possible!  

Edited May 19, 2017 by Tawlas

[2_girls_mommy]

Yes, my kids each have 3 weeks of camps in June. So when one is gone for her camp, we will do the summer schedule with the one who is home. Then two of those weeks they will be gone together during the day for day camps. Those weeks I will do library storytimes with preschooler and decluttering and organizing projects at the house instead of afternoon school. 

 

Then in July there are holidays, bdays, and a family camping trip. So our summer school will only be a few days a week between those things. Then we start back up full time in August. So our school isn't that much honestly. :)  But the lightness of it does keep us working and not losing skills while still being more relaxed. 

[Carol in Cal.]

One skill thing 3-5 days per week--math or reading acquisition.

Not continued during summer camp weeks or most vacations.

 

Enriched environment regardless--reading aloud, talking about books, visiting living history sites and discussing them, prayer. Bible applications, at least 1-2 weeks of science or tech camps, travel.

[Rachel]

We always have a read aloud and an audiobook going plus my kids are avid readers, I don't really think of that as school, we do that no matter what.

 

I forgot about our library's summer program. They will have weekly classes of some sort too.

[Garga]

We have 10 weeks of summer this year. We are pretty burned out on school stuff (well, the 9th grader is anyway.)

 

We're going to work on handwriting. Yes, they're 14 and 12, but a thread about how much handwriting is required in college for essay tests in class made me revisit this. My boys have chicken scratch handwriting and it's mostly legible, but as a favor to their future professors, we're going to do some Spencerian workbooks. That's the kind of handwriting that looks like what Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence with. I think it'll be fun. No more than 20 minutes a day. I don't expect they'll write like that all the time, but it will help them with their small motor skills and hopefully make their regular handwriting a little neater.

 

DS12 cannot take a break in math or he'll forget. We use CLE, so I'm going to slow down what he's doing for book 610, and then slooooowly do book 700 (the -00 book in their math series is always review, so he'll be doing review for most of the summer.). Instead of each lesson taking one day, I'll let each lesson take 2 or 3 days.

 

DS14 will be going from Geometry to Alg II, and the class he uses offers a refresher on Alg I. He'll do that near the end of summer so he's ready to hit the ground running with Alg II.

 

That's it for true academics.

 

My boys don't naturally pick up books and read them unless I make them, so I'll be making them. Once they pick up the book, they enjoy it, so I'll be setting aside an hour a day for them to read some fluff novels.

 

I hope to go on a few field trips that I couldn't fit in this school year. We'd like to go to the Air and Space Museum at Dulles airport (because the oldest studied Astronomy), and to our state museum, an abandoned coal mine, and something else that I can't remember right now.

 

As I said in another thread, this summer I hope to declutter and deep clean the house. I plan on having the boys help out with that a little bit. I plan on doing the bulk of it myself, but everyone in a family needs to help keep the house nice, so I'll be requiring them to help.

 

I'm making a concentrated effort to teach my oldest Home Ec for high school credit, so once the house is deep cleaned, I'll be teaching him (and the youngest) housekeeping skills. They already know some of these things, but don't do them routinely: laundry, cleaning a bathroom and kitchen, dusting. Just the basic housekeeping skills that everyone should know so that when they move out they aren't living in a pigsty.

 

As part of Home Ec, I will be teaching the boys how to cook every single meal that we eat. We're a house of picky eaters, so there are only 8 or 9 meals that we eat over and over. By the end of summer, they'll be able to do them completely alone.

 

As part of Home Ec, I have some simple sewing repair projects to do (fix a rip in a robe, fix a rip in a jacket pocket, add pockets to a pair of sleeping pants, etc.).

 

And again, as part of Home Ec, there are some simple car maintenance jobs that my oldest will learn.

 

So...handwriting and math are academic. Reading, field trips, home ec, and decluttering/cooking/sewing are also academic, but not hard academics. They won't even realize that some of that stuff counts as school.

 

There are a few semi-educational tv shows we wanted to watch and didn't have time to this year, like the PBS series of WWII house and Frontier House.

 

In between doing the above with the kids, when they're relaxing, I'll be writing transcripts and course descriptions, and finalizing our curric choices for next year and preparing for next year. I don't get it all done ahead of time, but do make a rough plan of how much to teach each day in order to be done by the end of our 180 day school year.

 

It'll be a busy summer. Productive, but hopefully not overwhelming. I'll be making a rough plan of what we're doing when to make sure we fit in time for relaxing and time for physical chores/activities and time for seat work.

 

I'd also like to get in some kayaking and rollerskating for PE over the summer.

 

:)

 

I think we can do it all!!!!

[EKT]

We do what I've come to call "light summer schooling." This consists of math daily, spelling daily, and reading daily (books of their choice). I also plan to do a quick daily Latin vocab flashcard session for the older one (so she doesn't lose what she learned this past year), and cursive practice with colorful pens for the younger one. We do all this first thing in the morning and I try my best to make it all fun and cuddly. (For reading, for example, we all gather together on the couch under a light quilt and I read my book while they read theirs.) Takes about 2 hours, generally from 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (about 1 hour for seat work and 1 hour of reading). Then the rest of the day is spent outdoors, at the pool, engaged in free play, or engaged in things they just love to do like arts and crafts, audiobooks, activity books, baking, journal writing, etc. And then I read aloud to them at bedtime. (I can't wait; I have about three more weeks to go before I declare it "summer" and I am so excited!) 

 

This has worked really well for us over the past couple summers! It's not full-on school and it's got a super casual vibe, so it genuinely feels like a break, but the kids don't forget their math facts, either. 

[Peaceful Isle]

For my six year old, we are going to focus on reading and crafts this summer, and a bit of math. My middle two will read lots of literature. They are also going to finish up anything leftover from the year. My oldest will work on her graphic design course and also lots of literature.

My younger three will take art lessons once a week at a local art class. My oldest two will continue to work on their instruments. My second oldest will take horse riding lessons and volunteer once a week there.

 

I also hope to go camping once this summer, and also visit their cousins once as well.

 

Other than that, there will be lots of relaxing, and watching movies in the afternoon â¤ï¸

Edited May 19, 2017 by Peacefulisle

[Arcadia]

When my kids were k-5, what we did was have them do a new sport, an art class in an area of art they have not tried yet, and a music theory class because we didn't cover art or music theory during the academic year. They did the libraries' summer reading programs and did math in an unplanned manner. So it could be zero minutes some days and a few hours some days. Somehow math got done.

[Coco_Clark]

We continue Morning reading, scaled down to prayer, bible, a fun lit reading, and memory review.

 

Then they independently do a half sheet of math review, a journal entry (switching between lots of different forms of writing- letters, fiction, non fiction, etc), and 10 minutes per grade of age appropriate non-junk reading (comics and beastwars reserved for personal time).

 

Piano kids keep up piano. Sometimes I bust out a subject that got ignored the last year. This summer I'm toying with trying to get everyone typing... but for the most part we just 3 r's it and try to enjoy the weather.

[73349]

We're reducing piano lessons to every other week;

dropping history (some years I've done a MBTP social studies unit, but not this year);

keeping up the same easy pace in math and grammar;

going to the pool once a week;

trying a DIY summer reading program that requires more than the library's but also offers amazing prizes;

reviewing spelling and Spanish;

doing one page of cursive a week to prevent backsliding; and

DS will pick a science project to do.

Edited May 20, 2017 by whitehawk

[sdobis]

We work on either spelling or math since these are both difficult for my daughter. She loses a lot of ground on both if there's not constant review. She also has a booklist to read through and daily typing practice.

[Clemsondana]

I've never really had problems with my kids forgetting skills over the summer (they'll be starting 3rd and 6th in the fall), so we don't do a lot of structured practice. This year I'm asking my older child to do Life of Fred algebra 1-2x/week in the car or while we wait for the other child, and my younger child will play a math game 1-2x/week (multiplicity, sequence numbers, or a few minutes of flash cards). They read all the time. Sometimes I'll pull out something semi-educational for fun - we'll watch Donald in Mathmagicland, Schoolhouse Rocks, a documentary, visit a museum, cook together, etc. We live on a few acres and have a large garden, so they also help with planting, weeding, picking, and shucking, shelling, or snapping what we will eat. One child still practices music, while the other works on sports. Speech therapy also continues over the summer

 

They both do camps in the summer - sports camp, church camp, scout camp, continued karate, etc. I also want for them to have a lot of down time. I find that my kids need to truly 'settle into' having very little to do and no schedule for the day before they get creative, messy, or are willing to struggle with a difficult project or book. For them, the mindset of 'I don't have time before I have to go somewhere' is huge, so, with camps and some lessons continuing over the summer, I don't want a lot of formal school...which doesn't mean that I don't get them to do everyday things like double recipes, calculate hours for a trip, or show them interesting articles or videos, but I don't do a lot that resembles our regular school year.

[Loowit]

We don't really do anything with school during the summer.  We take summer off so that we can go do other things and just get a break. Although at the end of June they will have testing for a couple days.  And I told the boys we will be doing their Greek flashcards a couple times a week.  DD hasn't finished her stuff for this year yet and will likely not be done until the end of June so she will have a shorter summer break than the boys who only have about a week left.  My older two will be gone a week for church camp, and the boys will have a week of boy scout camp.  I am hoping we can send the youngest to church camp also, but that is up in the air at the moment.

 

I will use the break to spend time relaxing and regrouping for next school year. I am burning out and really just need to time focus on other things and enjoy time with my kids just being a mom and not teacher too.  Obviously they will still be learning but the formal teacher hat will be off.

[Sneezyone]

We do math and language arts review (1-2 workbook pages a day) and 1 hour of reading. DD is doing a little more math because she's taking an accelerated math class next fall. I am pre-teaching four concepts that would have been covered this year if she'd stayed at home.  :glare: Besides that, we'll be doing some cooking and robot building and art but that stuff is just for fun and to keep us busy and away from screens. Meh, we might try to squeeze in two weeks in Greece but not sure how likely that is b/c we have a big fall/winter trip planned.

Edited May 20, 2017 by Sneezyone

[MistyMountain]

We will do some school stuff in the morning and have a shorter day in the summer maybe an hour each kid with most subjects except what is essential for each kid to not lose skills cut. All of them will do math but some of the math extras will be cut and each kid has a language arts portion we will work on depending on what they need to keep working on to not lose skills.The ones who can read will also keep reading and I will read aloud and get audiobooks.

Edited May 22, 2017 by MistyMountain

[Rachel]

I hope to go on a few field trips that I couldn't fit in this school year. We'd like to go to the Air and Space Museum at Dulles airport (because the oldest studied Astronomy), and to our state museum, an abandoned coal mine, and something else that I can't remember right now.

 

We visited the Dulles Air and Soace Museum last spring, it was fabulous! It was especially neat for our family as my nephew and sister were present for Discovery's last flight.

[HS Mom in NC]

We take a break from academics except phonics.

[Guest]

I'm noticing a few patterns. It looks like we have one good year of year round schooling but then we need to take the summer off the second year. Unit studies and rabbit trails also work well for us: we did "ships and shipwrecks" last year. Some years the extra review in the Autumn is worth it because we come back to it with a fresh attitude and just plain need to decompress.

 

Travel is always good, it just isn't realistic for our family at the present time.

 

Reading aloud isn't "school" in the summer, it's just life. It magically transmorgrifies back into "school" the second week of August or whenever random strangers start saying, "Aren't you glad they're back in school?"

Edited May 22, 2017 by Guest

[Soror]

We do a very light summer school, I need the break as much as them. We had 2 wks entirely off (other than reading library books) and will then have some more time off when we do vacation but the rest of the summer I require:

 

15-20 min of math- ds is using Alcumus running behind where he is in AoPS pre-A for review

Girls are doing Prodigy Math- I only require 15 min from them but they always go over- I also keep an eye on how many problems they actually do so they just don't play around.

 

Reading daily- we are making regular trips to the library-- I get fiction and non-fiction and don't really care what they read. Ds has already read some from his booklists for next year (although I didn't tell him that), I just happened to put them in the book basket :)

 

Outside time (playing, walks, biking etc) and chores as always

[ScoutTN]

We take a few weeks complete break from school for a family vacation, VBS, camp etc. No school work on swim meet days or the occasional special event - canoe trip, scout or youth group event etc. 

 

Most weekdays we do math and some writing. Math lessons and games, lots of games. Dd will do some Latin.

We always continue our RA and history. My kids do not consider these "real school", because they are fun. They read constantly, though they often choose fluffier books in the summer. Piano goes light too, with lessons every other week. 

 

Other than camp and VBS, our only structured weekday activity during the summer is swim team for Ds, which lasts from next Tuesday til mid July. 

 

Our days are relaxed. Kids get up when they want and get their own breakfast. Dog is a morning person, so this is never too late. Bible reading, piano practice, math, writing. This takes about 2 hrs. Then swim practice and pool time. RA at lunch if we are home, in the evening if we are not. 

Sometimes we go to the pool in the late afternoon and Ds attends the evening practice instead of the morning one. We eat supper at the pool those days and Dh meets us there. 

 

Our break from "real school" is about 10-11 weeks, mid-May til early August. When the county ps starts back, the pool is only open evenings and weekends, so that is our time to ease back into a full school schedule. We usually pick up subjects slowly, adding a few each week until all lessons and extra curriculars are in place.