Homeschool In the Summer

Some homeschool families take a long break during the summer, and some decide to school all through the summer and take breaks throughout the whole year. Whichever your family chooses is what’s best for your family, kinda like everything else in the homeschool world.

How Our Family Approaches Summer

For our family, we use the summer in a few different ways. We use it to try different things, we continue some of our lessons, we travel, we explore, and we go to camps.

Summer is hot in North Florida. There is no escaping it. Not only is it hot, but it is also humid. The 90+ degree days with 1000% humidity and daily thunderstorms start in the middle of May and last sometimes until September, if not longer. How do we turn this time into a time of wonder and exploration? Let’s start with a plan, a schedule, and a goal.

Homeschool Summer Schedule

There are a few benefits to keeping a homeschool summer schedule. They are:

• Make sure you have a plan of some type
• When you make it a summer of wonder and exploration there is no pressure on you, because it’s all about fun
• Your kids will want to learn because it will be about things they want to learn about.
• I don’t know about you, but we are already trying to avoid being outside during the heat of the day, so this gives us the chance to have some structure during the day.
• Giving them something they want to learn about means less time playing mindless games on their devices. It also makes it easier to have less screen time.
• My kids have a hard time with transitions, both from activity to activity during the day and then from no structure to structure so keeping a regular rhythm will make the transition back to school a little easier
• It’s a chance to do all the fun projects you put off during the school year.

How do you start? Ask your kids! What is one thing you want to do a deep dive into? What do you wish we had done this school year? This is a great time to do some interest-based learning and even unit studies. Harbor and Sprout is probably one of my top favorite places for unit studies. 

Screen Time

Screen time, I don’t know about in your house but it is a fight in mine. Every single day it seems as though all the screens are always going. I am going to use this summer to set a limit on the amount of screen time my family consumes. One way I’m going to do this is by moving the TV out of our main living area, this will also be as I start the transformation of our school room. Another way I’m going to try and decrease the use of screens is that devices will not be turned on until after lunch, obviously there will be some leeway to this. As we are working through a deep dive on a subject if there is a documentary that would add to said deep dive we will watch it. But, the standing rule will be that you can have your screen for quiet time after you have listened to a book, or read a book. All devices will be turned into my room at bedtime. I will let you know how that goes!

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Read-Aloud Books

Read aloud books are already something we are doing regularly and I don’t plan on stopping. We are currently reading Mary Poppins. I haven’t made my summer read-aloud list yet, but if you are looking for some good options check out the Read Aloud Revival. Some books I’m considering for this summer are The Little Prince, The Magician’s Nephew, The Penderwicks Book One and Charlotte Mason: The Teacher Who Revealed Worlds of Wonder. I have them all in my Bookshop and will be updating my Bookshop through the summer as we read more stories. Don’t forget that picture books are an amazing way to capture all ages of kids.

The Most Important Part…FUN!

Make sure you are adding in fun things like art activities, fun geography projects, and maybe even a camp or two. I know the summer for us is a lot like the winter for people who live up north. It’s the time of the year that you want to stay indoors and either be cool (summer) or warm (winter). This is a great time to explore new interests. One thing that I am going to be exploring with Ethan, if not Rosalynn as well, is whittling. I’m sure we will also try our hand at some other new handicrafts but I’m not sure what yet.5

Enjoy Your Summer

So homeschool and summer, I think it’s a great time to continue learning, take deep dives into topics the kids want, and learn new skills. I can’t wait to share more about how our summer shapes up this year.