Summer School

I have a fun friend named Laura, who is also a homeschooling mama.  She's one of the smartest, most resourceful women I know.  Sometimes, I think that I'm not doing all that I could do as a mama, because while I'm doing crochet projects, creating twirling routines, and blogging, she is out building fences, taking care of animals, and fixing up her house.  Unlike her, I have to wait for my husband to do these things, and he usually doesn't have time, so we have a lot home repairs that have been left undone at my house.  Be that as it may, we were having a conversation about how we operate our homeschools during the summer.  She was surprised that one thing that we have in common is that we don't really take a break for the summer.  This particular year, her daughter had heart surgery, and I had a baby.  We also like to take long Christmas breaks.  My reasoning for the long Christmas break is that Christmas is a huge educational project in itself and should not be crowded out by a bunch of daily work.  The public school system would probably disagree, since most of them have done away with the observance of Christmas.  Be that as it may, the longer breaks during the traditional school year mean that we need to keep working on lessons during the summer.  I have had people, in apparent disgust, ask something like, "You ARE going to give your kids a break for the summer aren't you?"  I can't give them a break from living, and when it's too hot to go out, we have plenty of book work to do, which means that nobody around here has time to get bored.   Scheduling is really easy around here.  We get up, determine what it is that we need to all do, including household chores and activities away from the house, and then we get after it.  That's it.  Nothing is written down that says that we must rise at 7a.m. and be at the table, ready to work by 8a.m.  On the contrary, we are often awake until 1 or 2a.m. because Melody doesn't get home from work until after midnight.  I don't let the Princesses sleep longer than 9:30a.m., which some people think is wrong, but they wouldn't think it was wrong if they knew that we get up and literally start RUNNING until our super late bedtime at night.  Few people could shadow this family and survive.  The same holds true for my aforementioned friend, except that I would venture to say that her day probably starts way earlier than ours.   I know that it doesn't END any earlier, because we get to talk to each other on facebook long after supper.  Incidentally, facebook is a nice treat, because most of us homeschooling mamas don't have a whole lot of time to get out and socialize.  Does that make us "unsocialized"?  Bwahahahahaha!

In a nutshell, we homeschool year round, many hours per day, and give credit for everything that is done.  They will get things like softball and baton twirling on their transcripts, and family vacations are part of their hands on experiences with nature.  With all of the educational opportunities available during the summer months, it would be a shame to limit schooling to only Fall through Spring.

Have a Great Day!
Laurel