What homeschooling through the summer looks like {for us}

When I thought about homeschooling all year round, I wasn’t quite sure how it would pan out.  I don’t know any homeschoolers locally, and the ones that I know online have children older than mine.  I had a lot of ideas in the spring when I made the decision to continue with school throughout the summer.

My main reason for continuing through the summer was because I didn’t want there to be a lapse in what we were learning.  Emma has made a lot of great progress on reading and math, and I didn’t want to stop just because it was summer.  Instead, I hoped to continue with the reading and math, but concentrate more on science since that is what seemed to fall off the radar during the long and cold winter months.  What better time to study nature than when you can be out in it all day long!

We still read every day, but we have moved away from the math workbooks.  The math is getting more complicated, and I know some concepts are beyond her age at this point, which is totally fine with me.  I don’t mind stepping back and working on what we already know.  Instead of the workbooks, we have been incorporating a lot of cooking and baking math.  I really enjoy math, and want it to be fun and interesting so that they enjoy it, and so that it holds their interest.

The science summer is working wonderfully!  Emma and Jack both LOVE anything outdoors, and I count that as science.  I think that the biggest draw is the mess factor.  It seems like anything science related is messy.  They love to help me in the garden and check on the progress of the vegetables, and they especially like to look at the bugs.

In fact, since Emma’s birthday party, she has taken a large portion of my canning jars and run around the house and outside trying to catch any type of creepy crawly thing of flying thing that she can find.  She likes to observe them and draw diagrams (thank you Riley!).  She has successfully found a caterpillar outside, and watched it go through all the phases until it turned into a lovely…gypsy moth 🙂  She was incredibly proud though, and checked on it daily.  I have to be honest, I thought it was dead!  But, it just took a little longer than I expected.

Overall I am incredibly pleased with how this summer is working out school wise.  It is relaxed enough so that the kids are still having a fun “summer vacation” while also learning.  I am a firm believer in learning through every experience, and this summer (so far!) has been a great learning period for our homeschooling family!

If you are homeschooling your littles (kindergarten and pre-school) I would love to hear what you do!


Linking up with Hip Homeschool Hop