Just like @tranquilsea, we’ve had to take a few breaks here and there as well. Last year my son needed time off about 6mos due to his diagnosis. We took off for more than a month when my dad was passing/passed. And more than 3mos when I needed to care for my aunt while she passed. He’s still ahead for his age/grade level.
I think it has to do not only with the amount of one-on-one time homeschoolers have with their children, but also the ability to dump a curriculum that isn’t working. Unlike a school district, I don’t have to keep something that isn’t working. Most of the curriculum can be resold through homeschool groups, donated to a library or as in my case, sold on eBay. I don’t have to be married to any one program or philosophy if it doesn’t produce results.
@Hypocrisy_Central You asked a bunch of questions in your details. I didn’t have time to answer them on my first stop. I’ll try my best now. ;)
Those of you who home school did you do lessons all summer long or took the three months off? We try not to take more than a few weeks off, unless we have a circumstance/situation that deems we need to. Death in the family, illnesses, therapy-etc
Do you who home school start class at 8:30 to 9am in the morning? No. I am not a morning person. For our family it works best to begin after breakfast, with a bit of play time (mommy alone time) and a small AM snack. That equates to about 11am here.
I also have a SIL that homeschools her 8 children. They begin bright and early, sometimes before 8am. Since they begin early they are done before their family lunch at noon. A few of her older kids will work on research or reading in the afternoon, but it’s their choice to do so.
Do you suspend lessons for Spring break or Christmas? We stop anytime we find we’d like/need to. We tend to go at a vigorous pace Sept-Nov. Quite frankly we usually cover in those 3 mos, what the public schoolers do all year. Then, we take off for most of Dec and the first week of Jan. Even when we “take off”, we are still reading chapter books, going to museums and researching things we want to know about. For Spring, we take off as needed.
Our spring mirrors our autumn. We go full blast from Jan-March and are ready for a bit of a rest from “schooling”. We tend to focus on weeding and trimming in the garden to get some sunshine in us.
My SIL follows a similar schedule. They “school” from Sept-June, but there are similar rests in between.
Do your kids do lessons 6 hours a day at home or do you break it up in chunks? Chunks works best for most situations.
It takes much less time than 6 hours. For us it’s about 2 hours or less 4–5 days per week. That isn’t counting the reading we do with him. During the 2 hours, we do math, phonics, he reads to me, science or history, etc. Generally we do art and religion at a different time.
Each month, we select a few chapter books that are related to what our son is currently “in” to. This month it’s history through American Girl books. To include daddy in homeschooling, my son gets one to two chapters read by daddy of one book. Then he has private story time with me each day with 1 to 3 chapters from another book.
This equates to about 1600–2000 pages of chapter books per month. We’ve been averaging more than one chapter book a week since our son was 2.
We use a curriculum that is literature based. Our SIL does the same curriculum, as it is easy to work with, purchase, and use without set up. Even though Sonlight is a Christian based company, neither of us uses their religious program. My SIL does the CM Method. Ours is similar, but a bit freer in choice, and stricter in other areas of our home life.
Do you have an official start and stop times for lessons, or is it malleable and flexible? It’s completely flexible. If my son is having a bad math day, one page it is. If he’s having a great math day, he might do 6 pages. I plan for the least amount for each item on our agenda with 10–15mins set aside for each thing. Some weeks we’ll focus more on science or what have you. When we do, we might spend an entire hour on an experiment. Then later in the day my son may want to “teach” daddy the experiment :)
During the summer months do you suspend lessons until Sept.? No. It just doesn’t work for us. If we took off that much time, it would be like starting from scratch in September which IMO is unfair to all of us. We’ll take off from various subjects. This summer, the only science experiments we’ve done have been in the yard or the kitchen. We haven’t had any formal history or geography. Yet, our son has still managed to learn more about history and science than either of us recall knowing by 3rd or 4th grade.
Currently, our son is into learning about where historical dates fall on a timeline. He’s taken in interest in Native Americans. He now discusses in depth how natives lived on our land before any homes were built. He knows there was slavery in America in the 1850’s and that the civil war took place in the 1860’s. He understands that the underground railroad took slaves all the way north with out a train. He has a gist of when the Victorian Era was. And from there on he gets much of what happened correct. All this without history during summer.
Last summer, we decided to read all of the Little House books. This summer, he’s still discussing how pioneers “did things”. He compares and contrasts the period with other time periods constantly.
January 2010, we read The Chronicles of Narnia. He is still discussing the difference of the books from the various movies we have. Over the weekend he re-watched the BBC movies and discussed with daddy how he prefers them to the Disney ones. “Disney changed too much from the books”.
He’s reading words such as “Mexican” and from his understanding of phonics he read a sign on the preschool down the street from our home “Blast off to Kindergarten” without assistance.
We’ll begin getting back into our regular lesson plan after Labor day. Even then, we plan to have a couple 3 or 4 day school weeks as we’d like to take a few road trips. If things go as planned, we’ll most likely be onto 2nd grade math and phonics by January. We’re already well advanced in our reading alouds (3rd to 4th grade), and history.
Our son has Asperger’s. Most boys have trouble with handwriting without such a diagnosis. Originally, we were using a curriculum that made him so frustrated he’d cry. Before his diagnosis, I’d figured out just by asking good questions that the pages were “too cluttered” and the handwriting lines caused “confusion”. We tossed that curriculum and went with Handwriting Without Tears. He now writes as well as an 8yr old girl. Last summer besides the Little House books, I did his handwriting with him for about 30 mins per day. We’ve repeated several of the workbooks (something that isn’t done in conventional schooling) a few times.
Next summer we plan to focus on him beginning to learn another language. We’ll just continue reading while we implement the foreign language program into days of playing outside.
@Hypocrisy_Central Sorry for the wall of words. I recall on another thread you mentioning that once you have kids you’re thinking of homeschooling. I had tons of questions prior to homeschooling. How would it work during summer? Would I ever have alone time? How will we take time off? If we take time off will our child still want to school afterward?...and on they went. Now that I live it, I can say the same thing my SIL and others said to me when I asked:
It’s a lifestyle. Once you begin it, you’ll find your flow.
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