Lately I've been giving the subject of year round homeschooling a lot of thought. Growing up we always homeschooled year round with just a short break in the summer, from what I can remember. We always had birthdays and most holidays off and we never took our textbooks with us when we traveled (which we did a lot of!). I liked it, most of the time. I think that being the type of learner that I am, had we taken long breaks in the summer I would have had to spend a lot of time reviewing, and the time spent reviewing coupled with the 3 summer months off of school would have pushed me further behind every year. I think schooling all throughout the year sounds ambitious but in reality it's the easiest choice. Since we're going all year round our daily school load is lessened and so is the pressure to finish the curriculum within a certain time frame.
One of the main reasons behind our decision to school year round is that living in Mongolia, the winter months are really long and we tend to get cabin fever when we're bent over our desks for too long. I prefer to be baking or reading and the kids prefer to play with Legos, building forts or ice skating etc. So last winter we took about 3 weeks off of school to just do our own things to help us get through the month of January, which seems to be by far the longest month of the year!
Right now the kids are focusing on finishing their current text books and then we'll take about a 2 week break. Hetee and I will be teaching English again soon so this break will give us time to do our lesson plans and preparations. Also I hope to find some time to work on my online course assignments (one can hope, right?) Over the summer months we'll probably have days off here and there, just because. Also we have a few holidays and birthdays all throughout the summer.
Things we will be focusing on over the next few months:
Memorization: Poetry, scripture, and the books of the Bible.
Copy work to improve handwriting. Our leftie needs it!
Alone reading time. (We read every night as a family)
Anybody else out there doing similar things? If you have any advice or input we'd love to hear from you!
A suggestion: Our pastor and his wife are teaching their about-to-enter-kindergarten aged daughter the Westminster Shorter Catechism. About a month ago she responded to the first 24 questions jot-and-tittle perfectly.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth,
John
Hi mommy.
ReplyDeleteYear round school is the way to go (academically speaking, many places, like Mongolia, are restricted to a "traditional" calendar because of climate which was the reasoning behind the whole school year in the first place ^_^).
ReplyDeleteStudies have shown that retention is higher and burnout is lower among student who school year round. Midterm grades tend to be higher as the semester ends before winter break rather than having tests/projects upon the return to school. Not to mention the greater flexability it provides families whose parents don't have summers off with regards to vacations, child care, etc.
When we lived in Southern California we attended year round schools and I loved it, and found all of the above to be true. If I had the option I would always choose to send my kids to year round school!