Summer Plans -- newsletter article

Summer Plans

Many homeschoolers take the summer "off" from school. Even if you school year around, though, summer is usually a time to
(1) relax and refresh oneself after the busy-ness of the year
(2) reorganize and prepare for next year.

Of course, everyone has different ways of going about these processes; the following ideas are meant to give you a start:

1. Look through books and materials for next year. If you haven't bought your curriculum for next year yet, now is a good time to do it. This will give you a chance to look them over before school actually is about to start. You might want to keep a notebook beside you to write down ideas for lesson review, supplemental reading, or notes on how to present the material. It's particularly helpful to note the general goals for the course as stated in the course outline or in the book itself. This becomes the overarching "theme" for that subject for that year. I also spend some time blocking out my calendar for next year, planning vacation time, birthdays, or whatever else I know is in the future.
2. Re-arrange your work space. Were there any strategic problems this year? Pencils not around when you needed them? Loose papers getting lost? Toddler getting into the art supplies? Summer is a good time to tackle these ongoing irritations. It's also a good time to get rid of or store the extra things that are just clutter, and at the same time, make a list of things that are needed, whether school supplies or shelving space. While you are rearranging, it is easy to do a good cleaning. Get your kids involved.
3. Spend time with your family. Every family has different ideas of fun, but all families can benefit both from some lazy, long days and from some fun family activities. My family likes to hike and observe nature close up --you may prefer swimming pools or camping trips. The goal is recharging your batteries and building relationships with each other.
4. Observe your children. While you are spending time having fun with your children, you have a good opportunity to get to know them better. What do they like to do, and choose to do? What are their strengths and weaknesses? As a busy homeschooling mom, sometimes I forget to do this during the school year, but slower times give me a chance to reconnect, and notice what is unique about my particular blessings from God. I like to keep informal notes about what I observe; this is certainly not a necessity though. I find that the more conscious I am of my child's temperament, talents and preferred activities, the easier it is to work with him on academic and spiritual issues. It also is an aid to building a close relationship.
5. Most of all, pray. I saved this for last because it has been by far the most beneficial "summer improvement project" I have done. The suggestions above, and any other summer priorities you have, can be informed and sanctified by offering them to God. Bring your concerns and anxieties to Our Savior and to Our Blessed Mother. Ask them to guide you as you work through your preparations for next year, and to bless your leisure time. Going to some daily Masses as a family, or to an hour of Adoration of the Sacrament, will bring great rewards.

Kolbe recommends a family retreat before the start of each school year. By using your summer projects to reflect on God's plans for your children and your homeschool, you can make the whole summer into a preparation for this retreat and for the next school year.

I hope these ideas give you a start in planning your summer.

Day 23-- Lessons in Pictures

Today went like this.

Yes, so the kids have figured out how to extend the schoolday -- not quite the way I was planning.

(really, though, unschooling for a year taught me the preciousness of the off-beat or Very Odd moments -- things do eventually get done)


In addition to our normal "dailies" of Math, Latin, Greek, vocabulary/handwriting, which you probably are familiar with by now, we had styrofoam and box battles, styrofoam stacking, and played with/worked out on the exercise bike.



I did phonics with Aidan and Paddy again. This really slows down the momentum of the schoolday -- perhaps a good thing for now, but I will know what to rearrange if the lessons start going on too long.

Our routine is to read a Bob book or some other book, pick out some of the words, then go to pad and pencil and write little phonograms, words and stories with Aidan and Paddy in them. They like this. We'll see how it does in the effectiveness department. Another extension might be what we did last week -- painting words in watercolors -- or what we did a bit of last year -- associating the ASL signs with the letters. I am also looking through A Writing Road to Reading since one weakness of our literacy program in the past was that the kids all got miles ahead in reading compared to writing. It takes till about junior high or early high school for the gap to start narrowing, and then the kids become accomplished writers. This might just be normal for our family, but I do think I would feel a bit more comfortable if the writing kept better pace with the reading.

Since the boys have their Bionicles out and the littlies are happily pestering them right now, I have time to upload some pictures. Here is our continent matching game -- (I wish I had taken a better picture of the contents of the baggie, but it is labels for the continents and major oceans, plus some cut-outs of the shapes of the individual continents along with their size in square miles). Now that they are labelling with ease, I am having them assemble the continents sort of like a puzzle, and for a place value exercise I had Kieron put the continents in order of size.



Here is our Latin matching:

I am making similar ones for the noun declensions. I needed something like Quia that we could do for grammar, since they are at the point where it's harder to improvise your way through the sentences in Henle.

Here is Kieron's daily checklist -- I don't write them out every day anymore, just when life is crazy enough that I can't get him through the routine with verbal directions.

Monday is the day he reads a new chapter in Faith and Life, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday I go through the quiz with him -- he answers the questions he knows, and then I have him look up the ones he didn't know. Then according to how he does, I make religious lesson plans for the rest of the week -- for example, this week he was fuzzy on the mysteries for the Rosary (he used to know them but we lapsed family rosaries recently....sigh) so I am brainstorming ways to present these for him.

Here is the math for boys who quickly get tired of using a pencil.

The red and blue cards are for the top numbers in the problem, you know, the addends and all those terms I can never remember. The green bar is for the equation bar. The beige numbers are for the answer. The orange cards are to carry ones and twos and so on. There are some tiny green cards which have dots to represent the decimal points, and so on.

He does addition and subtraction this way (as a warm-up and introduction, not usually for the entire lesson) -- dealing with 5 digit numbers and with column addition. Now I am using them to review multiplying large numbers. I wrote some 0's on some more orange cards to help him with place value concepts in multiplying. You can also use them for estimating and for constructing biiig numbers up to the trillions. Of course, this is not really hands on. We are not really working with manipulatives at his age. He gets the concepts fine, but because of his fine motor control he has trouble lining up columns and he gets very sloooww. So we can buzz through problems quickly using the cards and then I send him off with a few easier ones to write out and work on his own.

Tomorrow is an errand running day. So I have to figure out whether we'll just let it be a Life Learning Day, or whether to plan something that they can do independently in spare corners of the day.

Oh! One more thing. Another little projected change in the rhythm of the day... take the "babies" outdoors after the older kids' lessons. By that time they usually need the attention, though I personally long to go off by myself and type this, then take a bath and rest a bit. So I'm considering that.








The snake Kieron found last Friday.

Day 14

Sean goes off to his room in the mornings and works at his Greek and vocabulary. Then he comes out to do his algebra and Latin with me; by that time I'm usually done with making breakfast and having my cup of coffee.

Today I was reading to Paddy.

Sean went on to read Creator and Creation (which he narrated) and Drawing.

After that Kieron did Greek, Math (place value), Latin (more on accusative case, which he understood better today). He has almost finished reading Once upon a Time Saints, so I'm counting that as religion for today, too -- and he narrated bits spontaneously. One thing about "assigning" reading is that they seem to feel a link between me and the book and themselves, and are likely to enter on a dialogue about the book to me.

(I forgot to mention yesterday that Kieron also read a cute book called Return of the Dragon about a dragon that gets converted by an Irish saint and then returns to his Welsh homeland to try to make up for his past evil deeds. I do not think Michael O'Brien would like this book).

For Paddy and Aidan, since we've had restless moments in the past few days, I brought out Horizon Maths and what Aidan calls "Quia" (Kieron's MCP math). This kept them busy for some time. (here is an interesting article about older siblings keeping younger ones occupied productively)

Clare had the idea of starting a pirate movie for Nat'l Talk Like a Pirate Day next week, so a good energy filled the air as everyone ran around getting dressed in costume. Aidan was thrilled, but now seems to have had a backlash and is wandering around restlessly. The others are still happily engaged though.

I have been working behind the scenes on planning past the basic 3Rs plus classic languages. Rereading Latin Centered Curriculum and will probably try to read more of the Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion.