Homeschool and Summer School

Wait, what?? Are you crazy? I’ve been homeschooling my kids the whole school year and you think I should do this over the summer too?

I’m glad you asked. My answer is simple. Not if you don’t want to. That’s the beauty of homeschooling. You get to do it your way. If you are just overwhelmed and done with the year, then do what you need to do. Take the summer off. However, I do have some tips and advice you might want to consider as you and your children take the time to sleep in, relax, and take it easy for a while.

WHY?

Why would anyone want to continue to homeschooling over the summer? Well, there are some homeschooling families that actually homeschool their children all year round. This gives them the ability to take off from school at different times throughout the year and not just during holidays or during the summer months. This isn’t technically doing summer school the way we would traditionally think about it, but they are still doing school over the summer.

When my family moved to the southern part of the United States, I considered changing our schedule, so the kids would school all summer long. This was simply because the weather at other times of the year was so nice, and the summers were so excruciatingly hot that we didn’t want to go outside and do much of anything. I thought we might as well stay in and do school work. It never quite happened, and I think that was because it’s been part of our lives forever to have the summer months off. It was just hard to make the transition.

Of course, one main reason why a parent might want to continue homeschooling over the summer is simply so their children do not forget what they have learned the previous year. If you look at most school books, the first 10-20 lessons, and sometimes the first one-fourth of the book is mostly review of the previous year. This is necessary a lot of the time if a child hasn’t reviewed anything for two and half to three months.

Another reason to homeschool over the summer may be that your children just need something more to do besides play on tablets and phones or watch TV. Why not give them a book to read or a journal to write in instead? These are both great ways to wind down at the end of the day as well.

Maybe your child is a little behind for whatever reason from the previous year and they need to do a little bit over the summer to get back on track.

WHEN?

This is totally up to you. Maybe you would like to get something done first thing in the morning, so you have your children do some math review or copy work right after breakfast. Then you are all free the rest of the day to do whatever comes your way. Maybe you need some quiet time in the afternoon, so you have all your children grab a book to read or a journal to write in and set a timer, so they know how long they will have this time to work.

This does not have to be every day either. You can choose to do this only 2 or 3 days a week. Look at your calendar and plan the days that will work for you. “But what if I don’t want to plan over the summer?”, you ask. No problem. If you want to wait until you wake up each day and see what comes, that is just fine too. Simply have the materials or books that you want your child to work on readily available, so you don’t have to waste time getting things together on the spur of the moment.

This doesn’t all have to take place during the time when you are home either. If you are driving any distance, listen to an audio book in the car together. Bring a book or some worksheets to the doctor’s or dentist’s office, and get something done while you are in the waiting room.

Lastly, I would suggest you always have something ready for when your children say those three words—I am bored. You know it is going to happen a lot over the summer, so have some books, worksheets, coloring pages etc. ready to go, so they don’t have to be bored.

HOW?

I have already given you a little bit of the how-to in the previous section, so here I will tell you some of the things I did over the summer and how it helped my children through their school years.

I learned pretty early on that if I ordered the next year’s curricula before we ended the current year, I could see where the books overlapped. I looked at where they ended the previous year and how many lessons of the next year we could skip, because they were review. Once my children finished the current year, I would let them start taking the tests for each section or chapter of the new curricula to make sure they understood the concepts before letting them just skip ahead. This may not work with every subject, but it is definitely the case with most math curricula.

I don’t believe we ever did school every day during the summer. It was more like 2 or 3 days a week as I recommended above. It was also never full days of school either. I made sure they did some math and reading every week. We also read our bibles together taking turns reading out loud every day just as we did during the school year. The time wasn’t very structured either. The kids could sit at the table and do a math sheet or lay in bed or sit outside and read a book. During this time, I also continued to read aloud to the kids, and we made our regular trips to the public library.

There are some great worksheets in the freebie library! You can use them over the summer for some extra activites! Click here to get access: Freebie Library

YOU DECIDE

Maybe after reading this, you still don’t want to do any school over the summer. As I said in the beginning of this article, that is perfectly fine. However, maybe you’ve been convinced that adding in a little math here and there doesn’t seem so difficult after all. There is no right or wrong here. You may decide not to do it this summer, but next summer might be perfect for implementing some of these things. Either way, enjoy your summer with your children. You will never have this time, this summer, or this year again! Go make some memories!

Ecclesiastes 3:1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.