Saturday, May 31, 2008

There is no real “Summer Break” in home schooling

Well Summer is upon us, at least here in KC it feels that way. Even though it is still officially spring it sure feels like Summer. The pool is set up in the back yard and already has many hours of use this week alone.

Most kids look forward to summer as a kind of R&R from school. I know our neighbor has been counting down the days till she could “Sleep in”, something she is looking forward to experiencing. Keep in mind, in the life of a 9 year old (her age) sleeping to 8:30 am is sleeping in.

Now Catherine asked me the other day, “Mom do I get a summer vacation from school.” The way our Home School works is this:
Labor Day through Memorial Day - Full School
Memorial Day through Labor Day - Light School

So we are officially in “Light School”. What does light school mean? Well for us it means we do a math time test and read some every day. We also find learning experiences as our days go. Such as this week we used a level and worked on finding the most level place in our back yard to set up the inflatable pool. We then talked about how to make the ground more level. We used a level ruler with a bubble in side and learned how to read it correctly.

As with past summers we will be participating in our local libraries summer reading program. For every 20 books the kids read they get a free book to add to our home library. After 100 books they get a gift, either a library tote bag, a butterfly beanie baby, or a book light. This is a great program and the best part is the cost----FREE!

This summer we are going to be starting our history in July. The reason for starting early is because we like to do one chapter a week in history. In order to do that and be done by Memorial Day we have to start on July 1st. Really it is no big deal, we enjoy the history we do and it is more fun then work.

So yes for us Pierce Family School does not stop in the summer but we lighten up.
So what does you family school do?

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