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Summertime Schooling - Home Schooling During the Summer Months
Summertime
schooling and
home schooling during the summer
months do not have to stop.
One of
the wonderful things about being a
home schooling family is the
flexibility to choose how, what and even when you want to
teach your children. Because of this, many home school families
continue their schooling throughout the summer months, when
public schools have summer break. Unfortunately, because of the
societal standard of a "summer break", some home school families
reduce the studying or eliminate it all together during the
warmer months. So the style and intensity of
home schooling during the summer may
vary quite a bit. However there are many ways to keep your
family learning through the summer - without them even knowing
they are in school!
One of
the largest benefits to home schooling in summer is the
opportunity to bring the learning outside, and incorporate
environmental studies into the curriculum. Botany, Biology,
Physical Education, and other sciences are ideal for teaching
during the summer months. And another fantastic benefit of
continuing summertime education is also the ability to help the
ecosystem in the process.
Encourage your children to learn about the world around them,
the world that is normally covered in snow and ice during usual
school months. Here are a few activities and questions you may
use to learn about the world during the summer*.
Find a
line of ants and rub your finger across their trail. What
happens? Can you figure out why?
Find
out where your house's water comes from. Does your town have its
own well, or take water from a reservoir or river? If your water
comes from a reservoir or river, does the water seem clean to
you, and free of chemical pollutants? Are you content with your
water situation? If not, what are you going to do about it?
Figure
out where your trash goes. The garbage truck picks it up, and
then... ? Is anything recycled? Is it dumped at sea or burned,
causing air pollution, or put into a landfill, using valuable
land? Are you happy with what happens to it? Is there anything
you can do to improve the matter?
If you
have a microscope, look at pollen grains of different flowers
and notice how different they are from one another in terms of
size and shape.
These
are just some of the many different activities available to you
and your home school family during the summertime! Get creative
and encourage "fun in the sun" while learning about the world
around you and how you can make that world a better place.
Every
home schooling family has a different
style and approach to learning. Whether you take a more
traditional approach, or a laid-back relaxed approach, you can
integrate learning with the warm summer months to give your
children with the best education that you can provide as well as
an opportunity to learn about the environment and help the
ecosystem with "going
green" activities.
Wouldn't
it be wonderful to be able to teach your children more about the
world around them, yet help them to grow into responsible adults
by encouraging recycling, energy-efficiency, and conservation
efforts? Even though summertime is traditionally a time of fun
in the sun in our culture, that doesn't mean the learning has to
stop, and you can encourage your entire family to take part in
these activities!
One of
the other advantages to continuous
home schooling throughout the year is
the ability to take more frequent, yet shorter, breaks
throughout the year. Because of this, you can schedule these
breaks around holidays, birthdays, recitals or other special
events. Additionally, with the inclusion of
summer home schooling, there is a
reduced need for an intensive fall review, as the learning
hasn't ceased. Because of the more evenly spaced breaks
throughout the year, you will also have less burnout, more
confidence and increased retention of material.
With
all of these advantages, you can see how home schooling during
the summer helps not only your family, but the environment as
well.
*
Suggested activities above were taken from 101 Nature-Oriented
Things to Do During the
Summer
at http://www.backyardnature.net/101/summer.htm - we recommend
looking there for many more fun educational environmental
activities for the home schooling family.
Marcia Chumbley is a
work
at home mom and grandmother in Minnesota. She
is the owner of a
Christian Work From Home Moms
website
at
Faithful Grannies
http://www.faithfulgrannies.com
bringing generations of
Christian Work From Home Moms,
Grandmothers, Parents, Boomers and Families together
while providing resources, inspiration and affordable
advertising while balancing the work at home experience. She
holds a degree in Business and is a CMOM.
Article Source
CWAHGrandparents.com
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