Many times moms say to me that they continue schooling over the summer because they are afraid their kids will "forget" over the summer. This is an excellent point and many teachers and learning specialists agree that there is some regression in learning over the summer months if you take the summer off from school.
Many homeschooling families continue schooling over the summer for this reason, though there are other reasons families homeschool year round. I have traditional school friends that agree and either do tutoring or their own type of summer homeschooling over the summer break.
But if continuing your normal school load over the summer does not seem to sound like too much fun, you will want to remember that you don't have to sit at the table for a regular school lesson to keep the learning alive over the summer months.
Though we have continued some of our regular schooling, we do "summer light" schedule, as we call it, and do a little of something most days but we don't get up and hit the books early like during the typical school year and we work around camps and vacations and outings and just having fun being together and enjoying the weather.
There are many ways to do continuing learning over the summer months, whether you are a homeschooler or just want your kids to keep up with their skills over the summer. There are many online subscriptions that you can use to have your children work on their basics over the summer. We use Time4Learning all year but we continue to use it in the summer to either review things we need to review or continue moving forward. They have a great subscription that you can stop and start as you want and you can use it all year or just for a month or two in the summer. It's great and moves along at your child's level. The reports are great for a parent to see how their children are doing and what needs to be worked on and is great for unsupervised learning for the most part. The way we do it is my daughter does the lessons by herself, unless she asks for help, and then calls me at quiz and test time and we do them together. She likes to take a break from "clicking" and I read the questions and she tells me the answer and I click the answer on the quizzes and tests. It's a nice way for me to see whta she's doing and how she is doing while getting some independent time for her as well.
Another way to keep learning in the summer months is to incorporate games and workbooks into your summer. My daughter loves the Math Made Easy workbooks for Math, mostly because she gets a sticker for each page she completes. We finished up the Kindergarten book, which we used for review, and started the 1st grade book this summer. She thinks its fun and is learning. I let her do as many or as few of the pages as she wants. We have some other workbooks that she has gotten from the Dollar Store that I wouldn't normally use for homeschooling but she thinks are fun and they are learning so I let her do them whenever she wants.
We also use games like Zingo to work on words, Sight Word Go Fish, and Addition and Subtraction Bingo to have fun. I also let her play her Explorer and online games occasionally to mix it up. But they are almost always learning games, she just doesn't always realize that they are. I love it when I can sneak in some learning.
And, of course, through reading programs at the library and online, we have been reading a lot of books. In the summer, she can pick whatever topics she wants. She picks one book to read to me for every 3 books I read to her - since she is a beginning reader. It keeps us reading and learning and the topics are sometimes very interesting and diverse.
But lastly, my favorite part of summer learning is taking our after dinner walks as a family and discovering what we will talk about and learn about. For instance, last night we took our walk - over 3.5 miles actually, longest walk this summer yet - and we talked about so many things. We found tree bark lying on the path that was rolled up off the tree and my daughter asked about why it was rolled up in a cylinder. We talked for some time about tree bark and how trees grow. It was great. Then we saw 3 raccoon racing around and then up a tree. We talked about raccoons for a while. We took a leaf and put it in the creek and watched it float and talked about that. It was a nice time and we talked about all kinds of things. We are always learning about something even we are having fun and spending quality family time.
So don't fret about summer learning, just open up the opportunity for your children to ask questions and learn about things they are interested in. Just making learning games, books, and opportunities available will keep learning alive whenever you take a break from your normal school schedule.
