I get asked this question a lot by my friends…
Do you homeschool in the summer?
The answer is Yes, I do because if I stopped during the summer I would be sending the message that it is ok to stop learning. I don’t use a curriculum, a schedule, a calendar, we don’t take tests, and we don’t do workbook sheets. The biggest one of all is – we don’t do crazy projects, we all know that the younger our children are the more we as parents end up doing because it’s easier for parents to just do it, and it makes them look good and the parents want there kids to get good grades. Really what parent doesn’t want their child to achieve good grades and succeed. I don’t care about grades, my kids make straight A’s. I laugh when my friends talk about their kids making honor roll. What does that really mean – that they test well. As a child I hated tests and did awful on them, I would study for days and fail, and it would disappoint my parents, and myself, my esteem would be down and it would make me depressed.
Ok I am rambling, let get back on topic. I love unschooling mainly because my kids love, yes LOVE school. They enjoy learning, they love to learn about things around them. SO back to the very first question. Yes, I unschool my children during the summer and believe it or not we do all the fun exciting things normal kids are going to do this summer but I count them as school days. Ok not really because I stopped counting school days last year. We go to school 365 (366 on a leap year) days a year. As long as the girls are enjoying what we are doing we keep going it and I push them to find more information and discover more things.
Here is how to homeschool during the summer – do our top 50 activities…
- Swimming
- camping
- Learn about ants — check out our ant farm project
- make a tent
- read – we read 30 minutes a day –
- do educational app on our Apple iPad 2
- play animal Jam
- go on a walk
- make clay jewelry
- play soccer
- lemonade stand – we made $25 our first day
- Fold origami
- go to the library
- make a solar oven – cook s’mores
- go on a picnic
- plant flowers
- tie dye
- camp in the living room
- go geocaching
- go cloud watching
- fashion show
- water gun math
- go scavenger hunt at Fort Pulaski
- Go to the Zoo
- take a bike ride
- play a board game
- go watch a movie at the movie theater
- read a book – then rent the movie – see the difference (Harry Potter)
- puppet show
- tour a factory
- play tourist – learn history from Historical signs
- fly a kite
- make paper airplanes
- make homemade ice-cream
- go to a museum
- take pictures
- make more fairy houses
- go fishing
- make a cardboard box castle
- feed the ducks
- play “I Spy”
- go star-gazing
- paint
- do Brain POP learn about an artist, or art movement
- build with legos
- Go Six Flags
- Blow Bubbles
- Go to Botanical Gardens
- Start learning French (again)
- See my Cousins from France
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