What are we going to do next year and over the summer?

Many, many homeschooling families stick to a traditional school year. Each one has their own personal reason for this. I do not stick to a traditional school year. We do school all year round.

Summer and Spring are great seasons. A lot of our learning moves outdoors – hiking, camping, beaches, vacations with family, camping, hiking…….these are things we can do better now. The traditional learning becomes less.

However, there are a few non-negotiable items:

1. We do math all year round. It’s not a long math lesson. Normally 5-10 minutes. But it ensures that Nicholas keeps up his skills and even grows. Sometimes it’s math facts. Othertimes word problems. Math has to be done everyday.

2. Reading. We read 20- minutes a day. Everyday. Even if we cram in all 20 minutes before bedtime because we’ve had so much fun outside. But we read 20 minutes a day.

3. German. Foreign languages must be done on a continual basis or kids will lose their abilities. It helps that my husband speaks German fluently, so when we are out and about, we simply speak in German part of the time. It means they know random words and phrases  (both my kids can say, “Watch out for the rocks,” in German because we hike during the summer).  But we practice so their fluency doesn’t decrease.

4. Learning. We learn everywhere. Visitor’s Centers are great inventions. We go to them all the time. I used to hate going to them when I was younger. My mother would take us to every Visitor’s Center within a 30 minute drive of wherever we were. And if she saw a sign for one while we were driving, we’d pull off and visit. Now I get it. We go to them all the time too. Maps are also a great tool for learning. We do more geography during the summer than any other time. I invest in paper maps for where we are going, and the kids have to plot (with me and their dad) how we get there. Then they use a highlighter and trace our path as we go. We’ve been working on topographic maps while we hike too. It’s fun.

What does all this mean? It means learning doesn’t have to be done in the classroom – or the home. It can be done anywhere that you have the inspiration. That’s part of the fun of homeschooling.

The end of April also brings me to my next problem – what are we going to learn next year? I ask Nicholas is there’s anything he really wants to learn, and we brainstorm a little. Homeschool conventions, curriculum swaps, and online discounts are so plentiful between April and May that I really like to have a plan and get everything done by then – at least for the formal learning.

That’s what the end of the school year brings to our homeschool. What does it bring to yours?

We love space at our house. Everything space related is awesome.

We love all things space related in our house. It’s not unusual to find us pouring over pictures off NASA’s website for a while in the afternoon. Sometimes we are just looking at random things, sometimes we are looking for specific things.

I’ve been taking a class about relativity and astrophysics through EdX – simply so I can learn more and teach it to Nicholas. I signed both of us up for an Introduction to Astronomy class on Coursera in the Fall.

You can tell we love space.

I’ve found this great website – http://www.wired.com. It has a whole science section. I browse there daily so that I can find new and interesting things about science for short lessons during the day.

Today there was interesting news: Scientists have found a signal that comes from the beginning of time. The word “elusive” was used to describe this signal. The lesson serves a few purposes: Nicholas has to read the article to me – so he practices reading. He also stumbles over a lot of the words – so we practice vocabulary. “Elusive” is a word he didn’t really know until today. It has proven a lot of fun to use this morning.

Back to the lesson –

We read the article, then discuss what it means, and then see what Nicholas knows that relates to the article. He then has to write a sentence that summaries the article he just finished. Today he picked, “Elusive signal from space tells science about the start of the universe.” I only had to help him spell “elusive.” That’s a huge milestone for us, because normally he’s throwing a small fit about writing and complains all the time he needs help spelling. If you leave him to do it himself, you get weird words that he says are spelled correctly, but bear no resemblance to the actual word. Then there’s a meltdown when he has to do it again, properly.

Here’s the link to the article – it really is fascinating:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/03/gravitational-waves-b-mode-inflation/

I don’t keep our family blog and our school blog together. Instead, I keep the family activities separate from the school blog. It forces me to be accountable for school and not just for the fun stuff we do.

However, we do some seriously fun things.

We went to the WOW Museum in Lodi (a fun science museum).

We competed in a Taekwondo tournament.

We got a dog!!!

To see more on our family visit our family blog:
http://www.jonandnatasha.blogspot.com

So how did we do on our goals from last week?

Well. We met two of them and didn’t meet one of them. We did math before lunch everyday. Normally Nicholas completed his math before breakfast (Yeah!). And we did something with grammar everyday. We didn’t do a science experiment every day. But we did spend all day Friday and Saturday working on different science experiments. So that was fun.

Nicholas tends to like to do different experiments with me than he does with his dad. With me, he’s all about getting messy. With his dad, he’s all about physics and matter and learning the more esoteric stuff. So it can be difficult for my brain to come up with different experiments for EVERY day of the week. We did some on static, and some on weather (since we’ve had wind, rain, thunder, and lightening this week). But nothing really dramatic.

Doing math before breakfast has been really helpful. It makes sure that he concentrates and does well on his math. It also makes sure it gets done. Which is helpful to me.

We do some other math – like graphing and calculating and measuring – throughout the day. But the “hard” math – the learning and doing of new operations, is done before breakfast while his mind is nice and fresh.

It was a better week with the goals.