Do you homeschool in the summer?

June 2, 2007

Most of the homeschooling families I know take a break in the summer like traditional schools do, but I don’t. I’m a big advocate of year round school, so we do homeschool in the summer. This allows me to keep a more flexible and relaxed schedule all year long. I’m mostly an unschooler anyway, and we don’t do a lot of “seat work” so this works for my family.

If you do take a break in the summer though, here are some tips for keeping the kid’s minds active and make them think they’re playing. :-)

  • Word games like Scrabble, Boggle, even Mad Libs. You can buy these in travel sizes, which are great for road trips.  My kids love these games. What they don’t know is that they stimulate their vocabulary, English and spelling skills. They have to use math skills to add up the points every round.  Games are an important part of my “curriculum” year round.
  • Board games such as Monopoly (the math again) and checkers. Monopoly also teaches concepts around handling money and investing. In playing these games, kids can also be taught to accept defeat gracefully and be a good sport.
  • Suduko involves math and numbers.  You can find kid’s version of these.
  • There are some wonderful websites for computer savvy kids with fun games and printable materials. Some examples are funbrain.com, math.com, and abcteach.com.
  • In the summer, there are often free or reduced rates available at museums, botanical gardens, IMAX theatres and the like. These are very educational experiences.
  • Check out your local Barnes and Noble if you have a reader. They give away a free book to kids who participate in their summer reading program.

 

Have fun :-)

 

Posted by carrie | Filed Under Homeschool 

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Comments

4 Responses to “Do you homeschool in the summer?”

  1. Michelle on June 3rd, 2007 1:30 pm

    Enjoyed your post, we take the summers off so the kids can have the same time off as the friends they have in public schools but we still do stuff in the summer that keeps us thinking.

    I tag you to participate in this MEME.
    http://momtoanangel.blogspot.com/2007/06/8-things-about-me.html

  2. Tsoniki on June 3rd, 2007 2:42 pm

    I decided to homeschool throughout the year. I’m relaxed about it too, though it’s a struggle to get my DH to understand it all. :)

  3. Jan on August 16th, 2007 11:47 pm

    We homeschool year round since we’re unschoolers!

  4. Patrice London on June 9th, 2008 10:14 am

    We go year round too. We’re unschoolers! :)

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