Homeschooling Spring Update
Well, I have decided that the standard school year schedule isn't the best for our family, and since we homeschool... well, we can adjust it! :) We did school from January through April. How we are taking May and June off while the weather is so nice and I have lots of outdoor stuff to get done. (Planting garden, clearing beds, tending fruit, trimming things, etc, etc) I plan to do a summer session starting in mid July when it gets so unbearably hot here. We'll do 6 weeks or so and then take off for 6 weeks or so when things cool off again in mid-late September. This way the kids and I can really enjoy the wonderful weather in the spring and fall.
Right before we started our break at the start of May, Miriam had wrapped up 14 units of the My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum. In the last 3-4 weeks I saw a real jump in her concentration and in her writing which is her weakest area. I believe we can now work at the speed of one unit per week instead of stretching it over 2 weeks. If we do this, I hope to get through 5-6 units this summer. This would leave us 7-8 units to finish this fall. My tenative plan is to finish Kindergarten by Christmas, and to start 1st grade in the new year. At that time I will also decide if Evan is ready to formally start My Father's World Kindergarten. I know he will certainly not be ready before then as he is a (fairly) typical boy and is maturing slower then Miriam has in concentration level and fine motor skills. The fall will also be busier for us as I have joined a local co-op and hope to inrole both Miriam and Evan in classes one day a week. I am very excited about this and can't wait.
While we are "taking a break" from school we are hardly not doing any learning. :) The kids have been playing online educational games a lot as well as their piano program. They have been watching educational videos on interesting subjects they learned about this last winter. We still go to the library story time almost weekly and plan to do the summer reading program. And speaking of reading... I'm reading chapter books to Miriam (well, all of them but the focus is Miriam). We have completed The Little House in the Big Woods, Charlotte's Web, My Father's Dragon, and Elmer and the Dragon. We will be reading the third and final book of the My Father's Dragon series then moving on to The Boxcar Children. We also have outings planned to the local children's museum and (hopefully) the zoo. So, yeah, we're busy. :)
Another advantage to your
Another advantage to your more frequent but shorter breaks is that they won't forget as much during the breaks as most children do when they have 3 months off. Really your schedule is MUCH better than the traditional one.
Genius
That is a genius idea!...to take school breaks during the Spring and Fall and do longer sessions in the heat of the Summer and cold of the Winter. I really like that. I want to hear more about your co-op too. See you Saturday!
Books
More book ideas: Socks
and the Mercy Watson series by Katie DiCamillo.
Angela :-)
Sounds great! We love our
Sounds great! We love our co-op so much!!
We get a lot of schooling
We get a lot of schooling done in the super hot months of July and August. We like to do light school in March-April and November. In the spring, we do a lot of gardening and outside activities (science). We usually do some interactive history in July-August like with Story of the World or History Pockets. Then we fit Math, Reading, Writing in between all that. That seems to be how or schedule has melded. My kids are 8, 5 and 3, so mostly it's just me trying to teach the older two while I keep the youngest out of trouble. It's exhausting :) And fun.
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