Our Summer Homeschool Plan

This week is my daughter’s last week of kindergarten, after that she will officially be a homeschooler. While I’d love for her to take a little break and just enjoy a few weeks completely off, if I know her at all she will be asking me to teach her something by the time the week is over. Truthfully, kindergarten did not quench her thirst for knowledge and it’s just one of the reasons we are homeschooling. Because I know she will want to do some intentional learning I thought I would create a summer homeschool plan, each member of our family has the personality for year round homeschooling but I’m sure we’ll always try to go a little lighter in the summers.

OUR SUMMER HOMESCHOOL PLAN
(going into grade 1 & preschool)

BIBLE

We will just continue the way we have been and read random stories from our collection of children’s Bibles, in the fall we’ll start on more of a schedule.

LANGUAGE ARTS

I just finished creating our summer reading list, I’ll be reading books from there as well as a number of picture books. And Raeca will do some daily reading as well from some readers and easy chapter books.

I also plan on getting out some audiobooks for us to listen to on our summer road trips. We listened to the whole Little House on the Prairie series two years ago and all enjoyed it, we might have to do that one again.

She does a lot of self-directed learning already, I like the idea of Charlotte Mason’s copywork but I find that I don’t even have to create any for her, she loves copying recipes, book titles, you name it! So I’ll just continue to write out whatever it is she feels like copying, it’s a great way for her to practice her printing and do it in a way that she enjoys.

SCIENCE

This will include lots of working in the garden, observing bugs, birds and the snowshoe hare that frequents our yard, the occasional experiment and just being outside.

MATH

If she wants to do math I’ve got a big workbook I picked up for a few dollars for her. She’s a unique kid in that she loves math and she loves workbooks, I’ll just explain the pages when necessary and she’ll do them. I don’t have any actual goals for math for the summer other than just showing her math in our everyday lives like I always do.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY

I’m also in the middle of getting history set up but through the course of the next year we will take 3-ish months to read books on each of the following time periods: ancient times, middle ages, early modern and modern times. Right now I’m in the middle of creating a book list and of course scouring thrift stores for some of them. I’ll share the list here soon!

We will also be doing a few day trips and visiting some historical sites and we plan on checking out the local Folk Fest, a multi-cultural festival each year where we can see pavilions about a number of different countries; Bangladesh, Central America & Mexico, Germany, India, Greece, Nepal, Peru, Scotland, Sudan, Vietnam and more.

MUSIC

In order to make sure she doesn’t forget her music notes that she learned in her lessons this past year she’ll periodically use the Music Note Trainer app (actually made by my husband) to keep the notes fresh in her memory, she likes to practice a few times and then do a race and see how quickly she can do them, I think her record right now is something like 23 seconds.

AND THE PRESCHOOLER

The preschooler will obviously be listening to a number of the stories throughout the day and the audiobooks in the car. But we will also do some intentional learning with him. He’s always been very good with colors and a whiz at shapes but he has really struggled with numbers and letters, I’m not worried yet because: a) second child and b) he’s three, but at the same time, it is something I want to work on. He has seem to have had a bit of a breakthrough lately so hopefully it will all click soon. We will also be working on his fine motor skills, mostly through cutting activities and puzzles. Other than that we’ll read a lot of picture books and enjoying the beautiful weather outside.

Do you homeschool through the summer or make a bit of a summer plan?
I’d love to hear it!