For other homeschool parents, do you take the summer 'off' from school?

Question

If you are still going through the summer, what activities do you do?

If you take off, what factors made you decide to take off?

I'm just curious, thanks for any ideas.

Answer 1

We take a break but not the whole summer. Usually by June my son is getting burned out and he is done with the curriculum, so rather then starting something new we take a break and switch to logic style games and activities. We are also active in summer league swim team which has practice every day and all day meets on Saturday, so that takes time from our day. When summer league ends we are gearing up for VBS and I teach there so we are at the church 2 or 3 days a week for workdays.

So, we usually take off from the 2nd week of June until the second week of July. Then start a gradual return to school. Really it is so hot here in the middle of the day (Southeast Texas) that he is bored anyway, so it is usually not a big fight. Then this year we will get more into it when my 2 year old son starts mothers day out 2 days a week in August. This is my first year doing that, but I think the 2 year old needs some play time with kids his age, and he loves our church and the 8 year old needs some uninterrupted quiet time to learn the new challenges he is tackling this year in math and science. So, that is the plan. Praying it goes as plan.

We take a few days around Halloween because my sons birthday is the 30th. Then, Wednesday Thursday and Friday of Thanksgiving, a few days here and there toward the begining of December because he is involved in our church Christmas pageant and has a lot of later nights and 2 or 3 days at Christmas (not the full 2 weeks it is too long and he is not usually burned out because he has had the breaks in Oct and Nov. We may take a few days in January or March and concentrate on a few more field trips than usual because that is when burn out sets in. We take a break at Easter for Spring Break and then go until June.

We may start working only Mon-Thurs this year depending on how much we get done on our new uninterrupted Tues and Thurs. The homeschool groups we are a part of have park days those days and we have memberships to the zoo and museum, and it so hot in the summer we don't get to go and do much then. Fall and winter are much nicer so we try and take advantage of that, and since we take less time off in the summer, in addition to the fact that we get more done than public school because it is one on one, it works out.

This fall our activities are going to be classes once a month at the museum, boy scouts, basketball, AWANAs, church childrens chior, and various homeschool group field trips. I am starting piano with him as well, but I am not confident past the early stages of reading music and beginners piano so depending on how he takes to it I may add in piano lessons at some point. From there we will have to see, I do not want to overload him, defeats the purpose of homeschooling a bit.

Hope our perspective helps, ultimately it is what works best for you and your family. That is the beauty of homeschool, we no longer have to follow someone elses schedule.

Answer 2

As an unschooler I don't feel any wish to take the summer off. Our pace is usually gentle and child led. I have art supplies out all the time, and we go to the beach and museums a lot. I read to the kids every night and them some more during the day all year round.

You would be amazed what the children get interested in. My 7 yog loves everthing Asian, food, culture, history. We are right now reading A Wrinkle in Time and Little House in The Big Woods. They are so curious and initiate plenty of learning. My 5 and 3 yo are the same.

I get such joy and satisfaction from my homeschooling journey. I feel a tremendous moral obligation to keep them out of the public school system as I'm sure you do. But I gather that you might not be enjoying it as much.

I believe that even a lot of HSing parents are afraid that their children are going to miss something if they don't do a specific curriculum, but you have to have faith that the children really ARE like a sponge and learning is their natural state, if you shut off the TV, computer, and other devices. I believe that we tend to expect them to be experts in many subjects. I feel that it's okay if they are very good at a few and the others will come with time.

Now a caveat...if your child has been spoon fed all this time it may take a few months for them to initiate learning but they will as soon as they feel the need and it will stick longer than if you burn yourself out trying to get them to do this and that.

A few good books to bolster your faith in your children

How to Drop Out of School and Get a Real Education

How Children Learn

The Unschooling Handbook: Make the World Your Classroom

If you're not enjoying the journey, make some changes. At the very least relax your homeschool a little and I believe that you will find more enjoyment and satisfaction.

I also find that paying attention to my own education has the effect of inspiring my children to learn. I am constantly reading the classics to myself plus several other books.

It's can be a hard journey we have chosen to have our children constantly around us, but I'm sure you will agree that you wouldn't miss it for the world.

Answer 3

We take an unschooling approach.
We have always gone year round, in the summer we do even less book work than during the year, but we include jobs around the house that teach needed skills in many area's of house keeping, yard, and car maintenance.
Since they still have their regular jobs, as well as paper routes we choose to do these earlier in the day so we can use the afternoons, to read, picnic, swim, or go on a hike.
The kids have summer camps, vacation Bible schools, holiday's to plan with picnic's, and road trips.
There is a lot of learning involved in all of those activities.
We take more time off during the year, because we like taking fall, or spring vacations when it is not "tourist season".

Answer 4

For the first time just this year, we took pretty much the entire month of June off (usually we don't take long breaks like that). We school year-round, with four weeks of school, then one week off. This year, however, we have some "issues" within our family that needed to be addresses and so we took a large block of time off from school to deal with them. It also gave me a chance to really evaluate what we were doing, school-wise, and decide what was necessary, what needed changing or tweaking, and what could be dropped entirely.

Now that we're back, we're only doing three subjects (Bible, reading and one more of the child's choice, currently math for one and vocabulary for the other). We'll add another subject every two weeks, focusing on the basics, until we reach "capacity".

I don't like taking long breaks like the public schools do because so much is forgotten in that time. The few textbooks we use repeat much of the information in the first several lessons when you move to a new book because the schools need to review this information when kids come back from their long summer break. We either cover them quickly or skip them altogether.

Answer 5

Although I hadn't planned on it, this year we are taking the summer off because *I* need the break from school. Our other activities haven't slowed down much, so we're still quite busy, but I needed a break from the responsibilities of academia. The kids are appreciating it, and I'm hoping that it is giving them a time of rest and renewal as well. I'm using the time to plan what I want to do with them next year. I'm very excited about next school year, and I think that this "vacation" time has had everything to do with it.

Answer 6

I'm anxious to get started again in August. I have the curriculum lined up with emphasis on math, biology and literature. We focused on language arts and grammar, history and Bible last year.
Both my husband and I have summer jobs. We both work for the public schools and have the summer 'off' without pay. My son has 3 summer camps, driving section of driver's ed, and hanging out with friends are all on his summer schedule. He is not anxious to begin school again in August. (smile)

Added: Oooops, I forgot something. We are reading short stories from a public school text book. Most of them are classics that we can get from internet so we can read together. Several have exercises available from teacher's websites. I fight the urge to do the activities. Sometimes we discuss the activity questions.

Answer 7

My kids are really starting to drag in school. I work part time and so when I don't work we school so we are in slow motion all year long. In other words school is NEVER over. Every day seems to be a school day even when we don't do it. I just realized that in 5 years we have never had a summer off. I have banned school work for the summer. (no protests) I hope in the fall they will be rejuvenated and ready to go. They are just hanging out at home with friends and going to camp a couple of times. (I'm going to paint the house)

Answer 8

I am just starting kindergarten with my son in August, but we will be doing year round. He'll get two off between grades, one for Christmas and one for Easter. I chose to do this because he's autistic and if we were to take a full summer off, he'd forget what he learned. We all know that that was a problem when we were in school even without autism being a factor! So, we will be doing regular school topics all year.

Answer 9

Sort of. Good answer, huh?
What I mean is this, during the traditional school year, we follow a fairly structured approach. We do Bible, math, language, reading and writing daily, history three times a week and science two times a week. During summer we relax, our "official" curriculum is finished, so we read library books, go the zoo, go camping and hiking, visit museums, etc. I try to take advantage of educational activities regardless of what time of year it is.
During the summer we also continue math drill work every other day, and the kids practice reading daily. Bible continues year round, but in summer it becomes more of a family devotional focus than an actual study.
This summer my kids are also doing science twice a month at a co-op, and doing a drawing class there as well.
So, in one sense we have summer off... we are not following our usual homeschool schedule, but in another sense, learning happens all year round, wherever we are.

Answer 10

We started year round schooling this summer. My cousin is a teacher and she told me that they go for roughly 3 months then are off for roughly 2-3 weeks. So I went to her school site and we are using that. I think year round is going to be fun for my daughter because she won't forget what she learned in the previous months!

We did take some time off though and unschooled. This was very profitable because she developed an interest in becoming a vegetarian, recycling, and gardening. We now have 3 gardens and are basing her school work around this. We are using an eclectic approach for our year round school so this is great for her to be able to explore her newfound interests.

Another thing we are doing ... taking lots of field trips to rescue farms where she can volunteer, taking trips to the swamp for her to explore, going to the library several times a week. There is so much you can do, inexpensively too, but you just need to type in "things to do AND .........." after AND put your city. There will be numerous things you can do and hopefully something that sparks your child's interests will pop up! Good luck and enjoy what's left of your summer!