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.
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.
In the last post, we took a look at ways to homeschool successfully even during a messy, unpredictable home renovation.
Here’s one last idea (the best one, in my opinion) for successfully homeschooling in the midst of a remodel project. Drum roll, please.
The idea is to…
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.
Parents of kids with math phobias are in a tricky spot. They know their child needs extra help with math but the more they try and work on it, the more the anxiety builds. The more anxiety builds, the worse their kid performs at math! And the vicious cycle continues.
We’ve tried a few different homeschooling schedules over the years but our favorite so far is 6 weeks on, 1 week off.
It’s not a new idea but it was new to me a few years ago and I’m absolutely loving it!
I don’t want to overstate things but… the LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD taught my kids to read!
Well, ok, maybe I overstated things.
But in all seriousness, I can’t think of any other single educational DVD that has been so effective or so requested in our household.
Whether you’re a Planning Patty or a Spontaneous Sally, everyone can benefit from a big-picture look at the school year ahead.
So far we’ve seen what’s worked and not worked of my original plan for this year. But there have also been some unexpected resources that have ended up being some of our new favorites!
As hard as it is for a planner like me to admit, sometimes embracing spontaneity is the best plan of all!
