Everyone has been asking me lately, "When does school get out for you guys?"
This is a difficult question for me to answer because I am rather torn right now. I have always felt that summer was really a waste of time ~ don't get me wrong, I don't think kids should be chained to their desks in classrooms 5 days a week 52 weeks a year, but I homeschool so I don't really think they should be chained to desks period. I do however think that the 3 months that they are off in the summer leads to three months of review in the fall. At PS they generally don't start learning anything new until after Christmas break and that was one of the reasons that KM used to get so bored with school. We have always done workbooks, projects, field trips and of course TONS of reading in the summer and during other vacation breaks before we started homeschooling, that is just what we did in order to keep KM entertained and engaged during these break times. So here is where I am torn, I don't want to waste the summer, but I don't want to overwhelm her, and I would like some more relaxed time. I know I am not the only one out there wondering the same thing because lots of newbie homeschoolers have been asking this same question on lists lately.
When I asked KM what she wanted to do she said "Can't we just do what we have always done?" So that is the plan we are going with. This will be our last week of full-time homeschooling, then we will be on summer break. By Friday she will have completed the full 5th grade curriculum on Time4Learning and we will be starting some starting our "Homeschooling Lite." We will be doing review of math daily, lots of reading, LOTS of outings, and I think we will try out my latest discovery ~ lapbooking. I guess that sums up what we will be doing. Of course we will continue to post all of our adventures here.
What are your families plans for the summer? Do you do any "schoolwork" over the summer? How long of a break do you take? Let some newbies learn from the wisdom of those who have been around a bit longer!
I feel the same way about the summer...we areant stopping either because I just started school in Jan if I stop now I will have to start all over again in the fall. So we're alittle more relaxed and of course LOTS of field trips and differnt kinds of learning like today we learned about gardening and parts of plants but it was more hands on!! I have an interest for lapbooking too, there are so many endless possibilities, although my son is young I think it would work great durring unit studies as a review folder too!! Good luck on your lapbooking adventures...there is a lapbooking yahoo group if your interested.
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I found a (hopefully) cool book which I "ordered" through the library for teaching children all about herbs. I plan on *tricking* my girls into learning this summer ;)
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