Summer School or Not<\/p>\n
The endless debate I heard between homeschoolers on issues of summer was
\n1. Yes, we go all summer, the kids get bored and on each other’s nerves otherwise
\n2. No, we stop in the summer, mom needs a break, and kids need to be bored and find constructive ways of entertaining themselves.
\nOf course both answers have their merits. I will start by saying what I did back then, and then elaborate a little bit on the choices.<\/p>\n
Our youngest child had special needs and a slew of medical issues. He was born the year our oldest son turned 6, so we had homeschooling with special needs. In the beginning those needs were very special and very time consuming. We were in and out of hospitals, emergency rooms, and operating rooms at unpredictable times until our youngest was 4, so in some ways, our homeschooling routine sprung out of the days when there wasn’t a medical need that was more urgent than homeschooling. We did math and language arts and Latin in waiting rooms for routine appointments, we listened to books on tape on the long drives from Kalamazoo (where we lived… yes, that really is the name of a town in Michigan) to Ann Arbor where the University of Michigan CS Mott’s Children’s Hospital had most of the pediatric specialists our special needs child had to see (and I counted about 15 specialists that we saw at different times, usually about 10 running specialists on the average any given year).<\/p>\n
Guess what?? Because of that crazy interrupted schedule (in 1998 I was in the hospital with our youngest non-stop from early March to mid June with only one day at home–where we immediately had to turn around and have our son admitted again) we schooled through the summer. We schooled through any time where there was health and stay-at-home-ness. \ud83d\ude42 And I never had any resistance from any kids on account of that because they seemed to know I wasn’t just inventing excuses to retain them.<\/p>\n
Later, when our youngest son became a lot healthier (after age 7, basically) we continued homeschooling year round, with the logic that we took our vacations when other people didn’t… like in mid-February or in the middle of October, outside the tourist season. We also allowed ourselves the luxury of just on a whim deciding to drive to South Dakota and visit the Ingalls family homestead, or trip north in Michigan when a friend with a cottage on a lake invited us.<\/p>\n
The key to deciding your schooling and not being met with protests from the kids is starting young, and just doing it. Usually whatever you do when the kids are too young to care or counter it, they accept and live with. It is much harder to switch gears when they are 15 and used to something differently.<\/p>\n
Now, that being said, back to number 2 from above, my friend who said she wanted her kids to constructively use their summer times to do things on their own, learn to spend their time well and not be bored. I totally agree that entertaining ourselves without electronic media is a very needed skill that many kids do not acquire because we either schedule them to death or we allow them to sit passively in front of little boxes all day. — They can learn those things in the summer at home while school is out, or they can learn it on vacation (where in our case we would go in the mountains where there is no reception —we live in Colorado) and hike outdoors or swim or do other things that do not involve electronics.<\/p>\n
Lastly, let me say this. I am not anti-electronics, nor do I think them the evil of the new millennium. I do think kids and adults can hid behind electronics, but as I recall, in the era before computers, we had books, newspapers, phones, and TV sets, and I do recall some people hiding from the people they were with by involving themselves with any of the above. Fathers behind newspapers, eternally running TV sets, moms eternally on the phone. — I wonder what they did in the Middle Ages, but I do believe that every family member must have developed his or her own mode by which he or she would check out and avoid engaging with other human beings. Some of that is down time that we all need, some of it is perhaps unhealthy ‘hiding’ rather than engaging. I think it’s always been there. Nowadays, it can be done with a smart phone, earlier it was lower tech.<\/p>\n
Should you homeschool during the summer? Only you can answer this, but I think the decision depends on what is good for your kids and you. Are you burned out? Do you need a break? DO your kids respond well to breaks, or do they need to learn to cope at home during a break? Are you behind? Can you make this pleasant and enjoyable, or perhaps half time for your kids? — I did it. My kids did not mind or know any better? I preferred it that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summer School or Not The endless debate I heard between homeschoolers on issues of summer was 1. Yes, we go all summer, the kids get bored and on each other’s nerves otherwise 2. No, we stop in the summer, mom … Continue reading