school work over summer break

[MomN]

We are winding down with school for the year.  I like to have the summer off; however, I do want to sprinkle in a little school on a weekly basis.  I am trying to figure out a good balance, but I'm not sure what this actually looks like.  I'm definitely hoping for less than an hour maybe 3 to 4 days per week.  We will do read alouds together, so I have that taken care of.  For math, we will slowly go through Kate Snow's multiplication facts book, but Phonics and Handwriting - these are the two areas I'm not exactly sure how to assign over the break.  My older son is currently in the middle of AAR 4 - do I continue doing lessons sporadically or should I just have him read books off the shelf to me for maybe 15 minutes 3-4 days per week?  Handwriting ... I don't currently have a book for over the summer so I am looking for ideas on this as well.

Thanks!

Laura

[MomN]

I wanted to add, the whole goal of this is to not forget stuff over summer break.  

[PeachyDoodle]

We have always done school lite in the summers, both for skill maintenance and because we operate so much better with a schedule. Even more so these days, when we aren't going anywhere.

We have finished AAR, but when we still used it, I just continued moving through it at a slower pace. We might only cover one or two lessons in a week, max. I read aloud to him frequently. Sometimes he would read to me, sometimes not; I followed his lead. You could put a hold on covering new material in AAR but for us it was just easier to have those lessons to give us the structure. But if you have a kid who is enthusiastic about reading, I don't see anything wrong with letting him read to you, or silently if he's capable, instead of doing new lessons. His skills will continue to grow.

Handwriting is not something we've ever done formally in the summers. But we don't really use formal handwriting programs in the first place. I'd probably print out some copy work and call it good, personally. Bonus if it's more fun, like silly sentences or funny poems. Unless he's struggling, you can probably maintain his skill just by having him write a few times per week. A letter to Grandma, or a grocery list, or a list of spelling words for the dog, or whatever. It doesn't have to be "school."

We also have traditionally made a point of having some days and even whole weeks that were designated school-free. Everybody needs a break to look forward to, and nobody is going to forget what they know in a week or even two. Often it coordinated with travel and camps, etc. Not sure what we will do since none of that looks like it will be happening this year, but we will have some "off" days, I'm sure.

[2_girls_mommy]

We just slow down and work on days that we're here and not busy with other projects or summer fun, continuing a lesson here and there in anything that we didn't finish and that I want to keep up on. Dd6 did a phonics and math lesson tonight. We hadn't done one in about four week days, doing lots of fun online freebie things, science experiments, and art lately. Those days she just practices her reading at bedtime from easy readers. 

[Mbelle]

We have always done a light version of summer school.  Not more than 1.5 hours and maybe 4 days a week.  We keep up or reinforce math, learn typing, cursive, maybe some grammar, spelling depending on the student and read.  Right now I just have the younges rising 3rd grader.  We are finishing math, reinforcing spelling, 5 min cursive and reading.  

[knitgrl]

We taper off through June, and don't do much in July. Usually we are camping and so fort. Then we start back up the first of August. We try to do at least three days a week in August and then are back to the full schedule in September. I need a month's break, though this year, the two younger ones will be keeping their own garden, so we'll probably do some schooly things with that. The first year we homeschooled, we took the whole summer off like the ps, and dd lost so much, especially with spelling. The one month break hasn't given us too many problems as far as summer slide goes.

[2_girls_mommy]

3 hours ago, knitgrl said:

We taper off through June, and don't do much in July. Usually we are camping and so fort. Then we start back up the first of August. We try to do at least three days a week in August and then are back to the full schedule in September. I need a month's break, though this year, the two younger ones will be keeping their own garden, so we'll probably do some schooly things with that. The first year we homeschooled, we took the whole summer off like the ps, and dd lost so much, especially with spelling. The one month break hasn't given us too many problems as far as summer slide goes.

This is how it usually goes for us too, though I try to get some solid 5 day weeks in in August to kick start the year before outside activities start up and slow us down a little. We also often do a lasy camping trip in August after our ps starts. Campgrounds are usually pretty empty then. 

[knitgrl]

12 minutes ago, 2_girls_mommy said:

This is how it usually goes for us too, though I try to get some solid 5 day weeks in in August to kick start the year before outside activities start up and slow us down a little. We also often do a lasy camping trip in August after our ps starts. Campgrounds are usually pretty empty then. 

In my fantasy world, I would like to do 5 days a week in August, but after six years homeschooling, it finally dawned on me that we never do 5 days a week in August. Because most of the kids' friends go to ps, everyone is trying to fit in August playdates before school starts up again. In planning out the calendar for next school year, I ONLY counted 3 days a week, and anything over that is gravy. It is remarkable how long it can take to give up one's planning fantasies, and take into account what actually happens in real life.

[2_girls_mommy]

2 hours ago, knitgrl said:

In my fantasy world, I would like to do 5 days a week in August, but after six years homeschooling, it finally dawned on me that we never do 5 days a week in August. Because most of the kids' friends go to ps, everyone is trying to fit in August playdates before school starts up again. In planning out the calendar for next school year, I ONLY counted 3 days a week, and anything over that is gravy. It is remarkable how long it can take to give up one's planning fantasies, and take into account what actually happens in real life.

You know, our public schools went to year round schedules the year odd started k. They began every year on Aug. 1st. They switched back to a traditional year this year, so won't start that early anymore. We may run into this soon, especially if the public pool stays open. With year round school, they went to weekends only in August. This along with the virtual schooling everyone is doing may really throw us off. (Because we go to the zoos and campgrounds and museums when they're all in school... Now we don't know anybody schedules.)

[8filltheheart]

We take summers off. Completely. (Not this summer bc we are shifting our summer to fall when schools are hopefully back in person and things open for us to go do)  But, if I wanted to continue during the summer, I would make it fun and different.  For handwriting, I would create comic books or picture books with captions, letters to family, crazy telephone type sentences where each one of you adds a word to make a sentence and write it down for them to copy, etc.  Whatever it was, it wouldn't look like school.  🙂

[Momto6inIN]

We usually take summers of completely, except for phonics in the early grades. We keep going steadily with AAR til it's done. Other than that and read alouds, we don't do any school at all. This year we are doing Reflex Math for math facts and some Spanish just for fun because we have so much extra free time.

[Mommyof1]

We ended our 5/6 day school at the end of May. I planned to do 3 days a week for June/July. After the first week of that my daughter said she wanted to go back to 5 days a week but less work per day. I said fine so now its 2 subjects a day 5 days a week. It's working well.

I plan to have her off for 6 weeks starting August 1. Only thing she would be doing is reading and using a thankfulness journal to write in.

Will see how that goes. She is the sort of kid who needs that mental stimulation.

[Elizabeth86]

The routine we have adopted is that we quit school for a short break on the first day of June and we start back the Monday after Independence Day.  In June I make sure they keep reading and that is all.  In July we usually do school very lightly.  We are always ready to get back to us.  It's fun for a month to go without a schedule or obligation, but we can't do it too long. We usually start doing math and keep reading in July.  3 or 4 days per week.  Then in August we add a bit more to the schedule.  By September we are doing our regular schedule.

[cintinative]

We do math through the summer, reading, and this summer we worked on PE and are working on a health credit (it might take a couple of summers to finish).  By doing math during the summer we are able to do it only three days a week during the main part of the year, which for us is mid-August to early May.  We always take off at least two weeks for vacation.

My kids do better with a little schedule over the summer. Normally we would be not doing school here and there due to outings and getting together with friends. That has not happened this summer due to the pandemic. In July I hope we will get out more and will have some skip days.

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, Mommyof1 said:

I plan to have her off for 6 weeks starting August 1.

My dd was like that and she'd literally CRY if you didn't give her history, lol. If you need a change of pace for yourself, what about a unit study, something meant to be done independently by her? My dd could work through the VP online self-paced history in a month by doing several lessons a day. 

[PeterPan]

On 5/25/2020 at 5:49 PM, MomN said:

I wanted to add, the whole goal of this is to not forget stuff over summer break. 

There are summer break workbooks designed for this. BJU has one and other major publishers do as well.

Edited June 12, 2020 by PeterPan

[Gil]

On 5/25/2020 at 5:48 PM, MomN said:

We are winding down with school for the year.  I like to have the summer off; however, I do want to sprinkle in a little school on a weekly basis.  I am trying to figure out a good balance, but I'm not sure what this actually looks like.  I'm definitely hoping for less than an hour maybe 3 to 4 days per week.  We will do read alouds together, so I have that taken care of.  For math, we will slowly go through Kate Snow's multiplication facts book, but Phonics and Handwriting - these are the two areas I'm not exactly sure how to assign over the break.  My older son is currently in the middle of AAR 4 - do I continue doing lessons sporadically or should I just have him read books off the shelf to me for maybe 15 minutes 3-4 days per week?  Handwriting ... I don't currently have a book for over the summer so I am looking for ideas on this as well.

Thanks!

Laura

Handwriting: Pick any of the tasks below and work on them for 20 minutes.

• neatly copy the Quote of The Day
• write The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog as many times as you can in 5 minutes.
• write a review of a book or video owned by the family on an index card
• write letters for relatives or friends
• copy a silly or funny poem on a paper (to be mailed eventually to a friend or relative)

Reading:
Personally I would never take or allow a "vacation" from reading for a child who hasn't mastered all their phonics and attained, at minimum, a 6th grade reading level, so in keeping with that, I advise that you continue your reading program consistently through the summer and continue daily reading normally.

• Work on the reading program he's using every other day (including Sat or Sun), so Sun, Tues, Thus, Fri, or on Odd-numbered dates or whatever pattern works
• 15-20 minutes reading time for everyone every.single.day (including Sat and Sun)

 

[73349]

We've always gone year-round to keep our days short and minimize big transitions. Sometimes we're only doing an hour a day Monday through Thursday in the summer, but we still make a bit of progress.

It's easy to make your own copywork for a little daily cursive practice using an online worksheet maker. I like this one: https://handwritingworksheets.com/flash/cursive/index.htm Use silly sentences, the child's own name, months of the year, states and capitals, etc. One page a day.

 

 

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by Carolina Wren

[goldenecho]

For handwriting, ProgressivePhonics is free and I like it.   PrintPath on Teachers Pay Teachers has a fun printable program that teaches about dinosaurs and handwriting at the same time, if you have a child who is interested in that.   They also have a good regular program too.   Both of those have lettering similar to handwriting without tears.

 

[goldenecho]

ProgressivePhonics.com is a good free phonics program, with fun little poems color coded so you read a part and they read a part (its very light...you can do as little or as much as you want). 

[Sarah0000]

We usually school a little more heavily in the summer because it's too hot to go anywhere. Would Draw Write Now be enough handwriting practice for your kids? Usually kids find that fun. Or perhaps Pictures in Cursive? My art-loving 5yo likes this one. I think there's a manuscript version too.

You could also look at those big grade level work books. They are usually mostly basic reading, writing, math stuff with activities sprinkled throughout. My younger kids will sometimes fiddle with these on their own.

[daijobu]

We school year round.  We only cancel or shorten school days for: vacations/travel, Dad is off of work, homeschool field trips or other activities, day camps, etc.  Otherwise, summer looks like any other school day.  My kids complained once or twice, but it was like that from the start so they were mostly used to it.  

If you are like me, then you get stressed out over missing a single day of school, even for an educational field trip, so having those extra instructional days helps me be a more relaxed homeschoolers.  Also, you never know when something unfortunate will happen, such as illness or family emergency.  As you pointed out, it helps avoid summer slump, and prevents boredom.