Homeschooling through the Summer

My children and I compromised on their interest in extra-curricular activities and my expectations on educational accomplishment about two years ago and came up with a plan. The plan works really well for us. We aren't tied to the house, as many people ignorant of what homeschooling is, would believe. We get a regular break from book and computer work and have plenty of time to spend with friends, but our plan won't allow the girls to fall behind in what I expect of them in their studies. This is what we do.

I think extra curricular opportunities are just as important as typical sit down with a book (or computer) schoolwork to developing a well rounded student. With four daughters who share my level of social time needs and the plethora of activities available, we had to put in place a plan. We'd found ourselves struggling to get to the bookwork because we were out of the house so often. We decided that during the typical public school year, when most of our out of the house activities are scheduled, we'd do schoolwork only 3 days a week. Those three days are usually, but not always Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The girls can generally complete their schoolwork by lunchtime, leaving the afternoons free for chores, reading and whatever else may come up that can or needs to be done at home. With the level of work expected in their FLVS classes, they had to learn to manage their time. It wasn't always a smooth flow, but most of the time, the three days a week was plenty.

We'd use the other two days for field trips, 4H activities, living arts, library trips, Homeschool PE, co-op class and so on. The weekends are used to rest and recuperate, play as much as possible and for catch up on during the week stuff that overflowed. PE always happens on Tuesday mornings. We usually plan to have our co-op class on Tuesday afternoons. Field trips with our homeschool group, Lighthouse Homeschoolers, almost always happen on Thursday mornings. We'd often use Thursday afternoons for errands and library trips. 4H events generally fall on Tuesdays or Thursdays as well. Living arts events can be any day of the week, so we'd just alter the plan as necessary when had an event to attend.

This picture is a snapshot of our extra-curricular events only calendar for last November. (You can double click to see a readable image.)


This one is the same month, with Tori's schoolwork calendar included.


During the summer, we *do school* 5 days a week. We live in Central Florida, where summer afternoons regularly approach 100 degrees. Afternoon thunderstorms can be expected to a degree that you can almost use thunder at 3pm as an alarm clock. If you want to play outside before or after the heat of the day, you need to wear a chemical shield to ward off the mosquitoes. If you want to play outside during the day, if you are or aren't in the pool, you need a chemical shield of sunscreen. So, it works out well for us to enjoy the a/c, swim when the weather allows, play inside in the afternoons and *do school* every morning. It never made sense to me, to take such a long break from one school year to the next. You lose so many skills and much momentum when schoolwork is shelved for nearly 3 months.

Here you can see a snapshot of Tori's schoolwork schedule during this month.


I hadn't really put much thought into comparing this plan to the amount of schoolwork done by families that follow a typical school schedule, with a week in the fall, two in the winter, one in the spring, and two and a half months off during the summer. I overheard the girls discussing the number of days of schoolwork they do with a neighbor who is on summer break from public school. My girls weren't complaining, but I think they thought they were doing a lot more work. So, I pulled up the public school schedule, and our calendar from last August until the end of this month, and compared. I counted the 3 days a week we do from the beginning of September through the beginning of May, and the 5 days a week for the remainder of the summer. I left out the three weeks of vacation we usually take, spread throughout the year. I knew the public schools must allow for 180 days of instruction by law, but made a listing of their days to match ours to be scertain. Sure enough, it was 180 days. We totalled 179 days. I was a little surprised it worked out so close, but glad to realize that the plan we'd come up with on a whim was such a neat match.