E.18 Summer School
Summer days!
I love this time of year. Warm, sunny, free. So many ways to spend our summer days and as homeschoolers, we get a unique opportunity to decide what we want out of this season. Check out this episode to explore different ways to schedule your school year and how to use your break.
The outline is below but I must admit I went a little rogue including the must-read-aloud book for summer:
Episode Outline:
E.18 Summer school. 7 styles to make the most of your 3-month break.
Intro
Scheduling throughout the year.
1. Traditional (Sep-May with small breaks and June-Aug off)
a. 5 days a week. Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies, Electives.
2. Custom (Still the traditional schedule but perhaps taking off Sept and Oct for harvest instead of summer)
a. With this style, you will do the traditional schedule but perhaps take different times off to suit your lifestyle, religion, or work schedule.
3. Year-round
a. 3 or 4 days a week with long weekends and short holiday breaks. With longer weekends you don’t need long breaks to catch up on projects and rest. You have room in your schedule for things to come up (If we get sick this week we will just do 5 days the next two weeks) you only take a week off for Christmas instead of 2 or 3.
b. 5 days a week and stop when things come up (no planned breaks) this kind of consistency can either breed great habits where school just becomes part of a rhythm of their day or can lead to you doing much less school than you think because in theory, you are doing it all the time but in actuality, things keep coming up and since you have no scheduled break to deal with them or rest you are constantly taking breaks and feeling guilty about not doing school but justifying that you school year-round so you’ll catch up. You need to know yourself and your kids well before committing to this schedule because I’ve found that most people need a break of some kind or another and you get a lot more out of a break when it is planned because you get to look forward to it which does all kinds of great things for motivation and mental health, when you are on break it was planned so you don’t have to feel guilty, when you plan a break and look forward to it you enjoy it more or make the most of it because you realize how precious that time is.
4. Intermittent (6 weeks on 2 weeks off) Rather than taking one or two large breaks you take frequent scheduled breaks to stop and reset. This gives you something to look forward to, is a nice chunk to complete a unit study or evaluate what is and isn’t working, and keeps kids interested and motivated.
5. No set Schedule (unschool style- all life is learning, prepare the environment). Rest is built into your life’s rhythm, so you don’t feel a need to take breaks. You do not do formal schooling so there isn’t really anything to break from. You are always looking out for opportunities to learn and preparing their environment with the tools they need to self-educate. Unschooling is not my style. I do believe there is something that need to be taught but I think this type of education does have a place in a child’s life as we will talk about a little further on.
A study done by Map Growth in 2015 showed that students, on average lose 20-30% of their reading and math gains from the previous school year over summer break especially in the early ears where decoding and memorizing addition and multiplication facts depend largely on practice and repetition.
Additionally, there have been countless studies on the many benefits of routine in children’s lives. It is at the heart of Waldorf, Montessori, and Classical education models because it helps to build healthy habits and more importantly gives the child a sense of security and predictability in their day. It helps them to feel loved when they know what to expect and what is expected from them. It also teaches discipline that will help them with their chores, learning, and later work and how work is balanced with play to create a fulfilling life. Charlotte Mason once said, “The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.” Many of these good habits stem from daily routines which we will cover in another episode about laying out your homeschool day.
Often that routine will differ season to season. When my husband works out of state, we have a different breakfast routine than when he is home but either way, we have one.
What your daily routine in the summer may look like depends on your family, so I am going to talk about seven different styles of summer school with their pros and cons for you to consider as we head into the hot months ahead.
Styles of homeschool throughout the summer
1. Continue like normal. If you already have an intermittent schedule, a separate break planned, or takes breaks as you need them. Then you’ll just continue on as normal. The pros of this plan are that you keep your well-earned habits and rhythms without disruptions. The cons are that it can be challenging- especially if you live in the suburbs- to school kids while their playmates call for them outside. My sister in law and I finally decided to keep the same schedule after realized how hard it was to have one of us on a break while the other was schooling one floor away in the same building. Watching her kids jump on a trampoline outside my kitchen window made it impossible for my early readers to learn anything! It can be done though if you schedule it right and set up boundaries with your family and friends defending your school time.
2. Reading/Math to prevent slide and keep up on skills. This is probably the most popular method of summer school in the homeschool community. The pros are that you prevent that dreaded summer slide that even homeschoolers are not exempt from, but you do not have to stress yourself out with elaborate lesson plans and extracurriculars. Reading for 20 minutes and doing a page in a workbook is enough to keep skill sharp but still allow for summer fun. The cons are that you still need to monitor it and make it happen to be in “vacation mode” makes it a lot harder to call the kids in for school work and they may push back more than they do at other times of the year. Still though if you tie it to another routine given the short lessons it should be easy to fit these two mini-lessons in. There are also other more creative ways to get their reading, writing, and math practice in, which brings me to-
3. All the fun subjects that get neglected during the school year or are easier to do during the summer months. Honestly, I get excited about this one! If you mentally say “we are on summer break but are going to a lot of really fun things” then you don’t feel the academic pressure you normally would during the school year to get your boxes checked and feel the freedom to joyfully explore some of the subjects you may have neglected during the school year. Subjects like: poetry or artist study, foreign language study, nature study, art, music, physical education, science experiments, or unit studies. We will get to what I do in a bit but some days the only school the kids do during the summer is gardening and nature study. Our apple tree project is coming along nicely and the kids are enthralled to watch it change week after week. It is a beautiful natural education. Reading in a hammock or while out camping is a beautiful bonding experience they will remember for a lifetime. Taking the time to do projects like this will help cultivate a love of learning and infuse your homeschool with joy. Its also easier oftentimes to do biology and the like when the plants are in full bloom, the bees are buzzing and the animals are out. When we try to study these things during the traditional school year the natural world is sleeping. Notice them now. Be in the moment fully. The pros are you will fill like a rock start for “doing school when you don’t have to” but the cons are it may take a little more planning and effort. If you need the time to rest, reset, or plan for the next school year, constantly planning projects could get exhausting. The good news is that you don’t need to go overboard though. A weekly hike, afternoon story, and maybe pulling out the clay or paint once a week can be enough to light a spark. Just add it to your weekly planner. What one joyful learning activity will we do this week? And as a bonus, you’ll have an excuse to grab a cold drink, sit on the porch, and pop on to Pinterest while they ride their bikes in the driveway!
4. Unit studies. Now I mentioned them above a little bit the unit I was talking about there was more of a loose term like the apple tree study where we are learning about apple trees slowly over time and taking notes or if you chose a water science them for the week and did water experiments in the back yard. But you could level up and do a full unit study. Maybe pick one week a month or just a few weeks in the middle of the summer and dive deep into the middle ages. Going to a renaissance fair, reading a book about knights and dragons, learning old recipes, etc. Make it a little more structured with reports and projects they are responsible for. The pro here is that you have an entire unit of history covered here so that you can make room for other things during your typical school year or go a little deeper into something you are passionate about. The cons are that it takes significate planning and execution and if your family isn’t accustomed to this type of learning the kids may set off their “school alarms” in their head and protest. I think a lot of it has to do with the presentation though. If you present it as a family adventure you are going to do together and talk it up a while before you get to it, collaborating ideas there will be a lot more buy-in and it will be a deeply memorable experience for you.
5. Speaking of memorable experiences, Go School, travel, and other adventures. If you haven’t heard of go school you are missing out. When I went to one of my first homeschooling conferences I went to a class about go schooling and was sold! The concept here is that they do all their schooling through immersive experiences on the go. They study caves by going caving, history by going to reenactments and historical landmarks, visit natural history museums, and the like. Summer is the perfect time to do this because you don’t feel the pressure to press forward with academic achievement so you can go on educational field trips and adventures with no other agenda than to enjoy them and pick up what you can. The cons are that it can get expensive, takes planning, preparing, and if you are a family of introverts too many adventures can be exhausting. But no one says you have to go, go, go. Even one or two special trips can be fun and educational. They don’t even necessarily have to be “educational trips”. You can still learn a lot just by traveling together. Trying new foods, meeting new people, seeing new places and even the journey provides ample time for audiobooks and important heart to heart discussions. When you take time outside of the home it takes you away from your usual chores and obligations and sometimes allows for a connection you may miss by going about your daily work.
6. Turning completely around, All the free time in the world with a prepared environment. Now those of us raised with a public school background have been conditioned to associate with summer as free play and may not want to give that up both for them and for us but a lesson I think we can take well from self-directed learning philosophies is to let them discover and learn for themselves but have the tools to do it on hand. If you want your kids to look up science experiments to do at home you’ll probably need to pick up balloons, rubber bands, and other odds and ends on your next grocery run. You’ll get in the habit of saving your amazon boxes so they can build shields and other creative pursuits. You’ll keep a library that they can flip through to find what they need or drive them to the library once a week. Letting them choose their own projects and interests can be a POWERFUL way of learning but it isn’t unsupported. You need to know what they are getting into and give them space and tools to do it. The cons are the messes that will inevitably ensue, the lack of guarantee that they will do something productive and not just messy, and the fact that they won’t be getting regular reading and math practice done. You may have a child who literally colors all day or rolls around in the dirt with their trucks. But they have what they need when inspiration strikes and with just a little prep work or a quick youtube search, you can inspire all kinds of creativity to flow. When kids have projects to work on and the tools to do the projects it creates an atmosphere of creativity in the home and they are less likely to get bored.
7. Of course, there is also Straight up send them outside with an ice-cream cone. Which isn’t at first glance a learning style but is when you look closer. I came home from a family reunion one time to find my nieces and nephew outside on a dirt pile in their swimsuits with a hose. Pure summer childhood. They were letting it run, watching it cut a path, learning how to direct their river, dam it up, watching the dirt move with erosion. They played for hours (it took mere moments for my kids to join them). That fall when we learned about landforms everything they did in play cam flooding back. Maria Montessori once said “Play is the work of children” and even in their play they are learning about the world around them, themselves, how to get along with others, and other soft skills that are critically important to a happy life. No, they are not academically achieving anything in this but academics aren’t everything either. There is something to be said for a joyful childhood with lazy carefree summer days.
If it isn’t obvious by now you can go with any one of these styles but will like to do a mix of many of them. I just wanted to throughout food for thought on what you do and why you do it so that we can always be intentional with our children. Personally, I do school lite. In the summer. Short reading and math lessons, fun projects, outings but I intentionally ask “what are we learning this week” when I plan my weeks so that we enjoy the joyful lazy days of summer but also the unique fun-filled learning opportunities it provides.
I hope you were able to find some new ideas for summer learning or at least look at school during the summer in a new light and see how it aligns with your vision for your homeschool. Work, Learn, Play, and Rest each in turn. Enjoy whatever version of school and rest you do during the summer.
And as always, stay curious.