Sometimes, I feel like the odd mom out. We don’t homeschool in the summer. I have seen and heard the arguments for homeschooling year-round. In theory, I think this approach is fantastic! If I had it to do all over again, I would certainly start out this way. However, homeschooling year-round doesn’t work for my family for several reasons.
I have a kid in public school.
Yes, I do. My middle child attends the local public high school. Therefore, we follow his school schedule. I just can’t seem to motivate my homeschooler to do school on the days her brother is home from school. Therefore, we start and end our homeschool year at the same time he starts and ends school.
We like our summer vacations with the cousins.
We are the only family in my extended family that homeschools. So, we spend our summers traveling to visit the cousins in different states. Or, we plan big family vacations during the summer. A few years ago, we traveled to Walt Disney World with my nieces who attend public school. We worked around their school schedule. This year, we are traveling to the beach with my sister and her family. We couldn’t do that during the school year since her kiddos aren’t homeschooled.
Em likes to hang out with her friends.
Not only are we the only homeschoolers in our family, we are also the only homeschoolers on our block. It’s hard to get Emma to focus on schoolwork in the summer time when the neighbors are riding bikes outside or ringing our doorbell. She treasures her summer days when she can explore the neighborhood creek with her buddies or hang out at the pool.
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My daughter attends dance camps in the summer.
My daughter, 10, is an aspiring dancer. Throughout the school year, she attends dance classes 4 nights each week. In the summertime, many dance schools host summer camps or intensives. Ours holds summer intensives. Some days, she’ll have classes that start at 10:00 in the morning. Other days, her classes will all be in the evening. Either way, it’s hard to establish a routine in the summer when her schedule fluctuates from week to week.
I need a break to plan for the next year.
By May, I usually know what I’m teaching for the upcoming school year. By June, I hope to have purchased any new curriculum I may need. I need my summers to plan for the upcoming year. I typically work an hour or so a day several days a week over the summer planning for the upcoming school year.
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Having said all that, my daughter does have about ten math lessons left in her math book that we will be finishing up between out-of-town trips in June. She also has a small book of grammar worksheets to work through, because she really struggled with picking out different parts of speech this year. But, hopefully, that will be about thirty minutes a few days a week, and then we are off to enjoy our summer break. I’m looking for some summer science projects we can do on rainy days and movies based on books we’ve read. We just won’t be traditional book work over the summer.
Good post. My daughters too are aspiring dancers and their studio has dance intensives but thankfully they are in the evening so we can school during the day. We missed a lot of school between my daughter’s surgery in October, my husband’s multiple hospital stays between December and March so we are still going although I’m going to give them a bit of a break after our assessment before we start up and as the girls prepare for their junior dance company try outs. We don’t do vacations with family as most cousins are way older than ours and since I don’t do well in the heat and humidity of summer we prefer our vacations in the fall or spring.
Your not the only one! I call ourselves Summer Unschoolers 🙂 I just can’t seem to break free from the public school schedule. I also have my niece a lot during the summer and the girls just want to play with their cousin. Not “do school”!