What a Homeschooling Summer Looks Like

I’ve written before about why I homeschool in the summertime.  You can see my past articles below:

Successful homeschooling in the summer

Year-Round Homeschooling

20 Reasons to Homeschool Through the Summer

But in a nutshell- I homeschool in the summer because I do not want to be stressed out during the school year. I don’t want to worry that they aren’t going to get done with their math books, or that they are throwing off my timetable, or that we can’t spend time doing something we’d rather do because we have to homeschool instead! !

This attitude has served me well through the birth of babies, hospitalizations, and the lengthy illness and death of my mother.  We did what we had to do when we had to do it and I didn’t feel as if some artificial deadline was out there looming at the end of March or the beginning of June!

BUT…

There is something different about homeschooling in the summertime, and I think there should be! First of all, I work the homeschooling around some of the other summer activities – like swimming lessons and sports clubs.  Those things only happen once a year and I want the kids to have a chance to participate in them.

My kids have also had opportunities to study more music and art in the summer too!

Summer homeschooling also focuses more on being outside and exploring nature and taking care of a garden.  Astronomy is a good one to study in the summer too.

I still push with things like reading and math, but also subtly shift the focus over a little more to art and music.

and movies. Lots of movies.  A lot of homeschools talk about classic books and classical music, but I believe that there are movies that a student should at least know about to be classically literate.  Today, for example, we watched The Grapes of Wrath!  

Catch up or move ahead – Summer is a great time for the slower learner to catch up with his/ her lessons and for the faster student to pull ahead and get lessons done so there is time for other things they want to study.

All those little things around the house- re-calking, re-painting, re-tiling – any and all of that is homeschooling, especially for the high school student.

Family reads should dominate!

But the biggest thrill of summer homeschooling is discovery – whether it be history and science,

to zoology!

or just stopping anywhere that seems unusual and interesting!

And if we do it right, the kids should be looking forward to what summer school at home with mom and dad is going to look like every year!