Sometimes I think year-round homeschooling gets a bad rap. I’m not sure what other families think when we decline an invitation because we’re still homeschooling. In the middle of July. Maybe they imagine super-serious, intensely studious days and very little play. Maybe they imagine Prissy and The Boy staring longingly out the window. Who knows?
(This post contains affiliate links; please see disclosure for details.)
It’s time to peel back the curtain a bit. I handed over an old phone to The Boy last Wednesday and asked him to take photos of our homeschool time. The following photos were taken by The Boy to document a typical day of summer school.
Brace yourself. A post like this doesn’t come with high quality photos, but hopefully it does show you summer schooling through their eyes.
First Stop: Math
Our new school year doesn’t officially start until August, but The Boy was so excited about our switch to Math U See that he chose to go ahead and get started on his own. He’s only on lesson two at this point, but I’m grateful for his enthusiasm. Finding the right math curriculum has been a long road for us and I’m happy that we’ve found something he’s equally excited to use. This photo is a look at his work for the day and the box of Math U See manipulatives.
Meanwhile…
Prissy was also working on math concepts while The Boy tackled his Math U See for the day. Her math was in the form of a fun graphing activity from a Noah’s Ark printable pack. I printed, cut out, and taped together the animal cube from the pack. I also printed the graphing page. The object was to see which animal reached the ark first. We took turns rolling the cube and coloring in a circle to represent the times we rolled each animal.
Not math-related, but we also read A is for Ark when she finished her graphing. This was the perfect combination to keep her busy while he worked.
Working on Worldview
Next on his agenda for the day was worldview. Oh, how I love that he loves learning about the foundation of our worldview! We’ve been slowly working our way through Apologia’s Who is God? and look forward to starting the second volume in the series once we finish. This photo is a glimpse at his Who is God? Notebooking Journal and his scripture for the day, Acts 17:25.
“And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything.
Rather he himself gives everyone life and breath, and everything else.”
Word Puzzles
While The Boy was engrossed in worldview, Prissy had fun with puzzles. Puzzles are such an easy way to familiarize her with letters and where they belong in familiar words.
Health Science/Anatomy
Our summer science spotlight has been on health science and anatomy. We’ve been using two main resources for this: Health Science and the Magic School Bus Human Body Kit. This particular experiment was from our Health Science book and shows the effects of tobacco on the human body.
The Boy’s first photo shows the tobacco juice he created by combining the tobacco from one unrolled cigarette and warm water for fifteen minutes. Next, he had to take a piece of chalk and leave it in the juice for three days. One thing we noticed immediately was the fizzing from the chalk as soon as it hit our tobacco juice.
After three days, he removed the chalk from the tobacco juice and compared it to a clean piece from the box. The difference between the two is undeniable, huh? When he finished this part, he documented his findings and cleaned up.
Wrapping up
By this point we were done with our school day. We finished it out with lunch and a chapter in our latest read-aloud, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Not too bad for summer school, right?
The great thing about summer schooling is that it doesn’t look all that different from our homeschool at any other time of year. The only real difference is that we only cover a few subjects a day during the summer. Our goal on any given day is to be finished by lunchtime so that the kids can enjoy their afternoons however they like.
So, yeah, it’s July and we’re still plugging along, but don’t feel sorry for these kiddos. Hopefully The Boy’s photos show that homeschooling through the summer isn’t so bad after all.
We got math u see for Isaac this year too. April starting April 4 let us know what you think about it and we’ll do the same
I’ll keep you posted on it. We’re very early in it, but so far, so good!
Curious , our state requires attendance record, as I’m sure most do…. When you’re on summer mode do you keep attendance? I’ve done both, but most recent have dropped keeping attendance in summer months as it’s not our full schedule …. Rethinking this as we now have done 2 summers of language arts, life skills and farm science…. On one hand I want to give “credit” for the work we do, and then I want to unplug from the official school duties and just live untethered . Like my family calendar in my kitchen, still reads June from when my daughter filled in the dates. Maybe, husbands keep attendance in summer? Shazam , light bulb.
I’m still working on that, too. I kept attendance the first two summers we lived here, but haven’t bothered this summer. I see the dilemma, but like you, I opted not to this year since we’re covering considerably less than normal. Our past summers had a least a couple of other subjects added in throughout the week.
What a great day. We have homeschooled through the summer, taken a long and short summer breaks. We seem to have done it all over the last 17 years. I think it is great you are doing what fits your family.
Blessings, Dawn
Thank you Dawn! Isn’t that what’s great about homeschooling? You can keep experimenting until you find what works best! :)