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Our Homeschool Summer Break – Year 3

Our Homeschool Summer Break Year 3 on grass background

In the last post, I promised you a summer on the other side of the continuum, so here it is! The summer of our mega home renovation! When all bets were off, plans were non-existent, and I was living way, way outside my Type-A, Planner-Person comfort zone.

You can see more about the renovation, including before and after pictures, in this post.

I didn’t try to plan a more relaxed summer. I didn’t decide that we needed less formal school-ish work. By the time I had my head far enough above water to think about our summer homeschool plans, it was already August. 

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Our Homeschool Summer Break – Year 2

Our Homeschool Summer Break - Year 2 on grass background

In the last post, I described the summer break we had after our first official year of homeschooling. If you read it, you may recall that I said it was a “fun and balanced summer.” 

“Fun and balanced” sounds pretty good to me – so why, I ask myself now, why-oh-why did I try and fix what wasn’t broken? 

Looking back on Year 2 from a Year 5 perspective, I think it’s ultimately because I let the “you’re-not-doing-enough” worry-monster get to me.

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Our Homeschool Summer Break – Year 1

Our Homeschool Summer Break Year 1 title on grass background

I never know what to do with summer break. 

Wait. Let me rephrase that. 

I never know what to do for our homeschool during summer break. 

If I ever had the luxury of my own summer break, I’d know exactly what to do with it (i.e. unlimited ice cream, a beach, and a stack of good books)!

But I digress.

When it comes to planning out what to do for my kids’ education over summer break, I perpetually bounce back and forth between two extremes. 

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10 Best Ways to Help Your Left-Handed Kids Succeed

10 Best Ways to Help Your Left-Handed Kids Succeed

I’m a right-handed mom with two left-handed kids. When I figured out my two oldest boys were both lefties, I was totally unprepared to help them navigate the left-handed-person challenges they’d face in this life. 

In my righty “this-world-was-made-with-me-in-mind” ignorance, I figured scissors and can-openers and garden pruners were one-direction-fits-all kind of tools. I just never really realized the annoyances lefties deal with on a daily basis until I tried teaching my own two left-handed kids. 

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How to Homeschool Successfully During a Home Renovation

How To Homeschool Successfully During a Home Renovation title on gray wood background with tools

Anyone who has homeschooled for more than one hour knows that interruptions are part of the job description.

On my good days, I try and embrace the interruptions – the many opportunities for real life training and modeling grace and patience. I totally agree with the writer of this post who said, “Interruptions are not obstacles to our plan; they are opportunities for us to embrace God’s plan.” So true.

But some seasons bring so many interruptions – so much chaos – it just seems impossible to maintain any semblance of order or sanity, much less get any meaningful homeschooling done. 

Over the past four years, we’ve renovated nearly our entire home, room by room. Home renovations are definitely one of those chaos-inflicting seasons – but there ARE things you can do to make it through.

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