Summer Learning

Summer learning has meant different things at different seasons of our homeschool adventure. This post is part of the monthly Canadian Homeschool Blogging Team series. The team is writing about "summer learning" this month. It was a lot of fun looking back over the last eleven years while I was writing this blog post. 

In our earlier years, we homeschooled year round and only took a few weeks off during the summer. We took more breaks during the regular school year and didn't follow the public school calendar. Those years, summer learning looked like the rest of the year. One of the great advantages of homeschooling is the flexibility with scheduling. It was great to be able to go on vacation anytime during the year, and much easier with my husband's retail schedule. 

From left clockwise: Early years of our homeschooling ~
Adrienne helping Celeste learn her letters by tracing them in pudding,
Adrienne studying language arts, Andre working on his Math.

For the majority of our summers though, learning meant having unlimited amounts of time to work on special projects the kids wanted to do, like making stop motion videos, building with legos, baking, or learning about different countries like we are doing this summer. There were so many summer projects!

Adrienne building a TV studio set with legos, Andre baking, Andre making a stop-motion video

Summer time was also when we spent even more time outside and together. Beach days, picnics in the park, nature hikes, bike rides...Often, it was the kids and I only, but whenever he could, dad joined us. 

summer family picnic in the park 

Summer was also a great time to explore where we lived. We basically played tourists, visited museums, attended local festivals, learned about local history. We also spent time visiting family whenever we could. 

From left clockwise: Celeste in front of Panmure Island Lighthouse,
Andre & Celeste with one of the sculptures at the Windsor waterfront park,
waiting for the Go Train in Toronto with Nana, Splashpad fun in Windsor.

Looking back, I can see that summer meant an even more flexible time of the year for us. Even when we had plans, we were very flexible with them. 

Summer is a perfect time to reconnect and to simply have fun together. 

One simple idea that you might find useful is our summer lists. I sat down with my three kids usually in June, and asked them to come up with a wish list of what they would like to do that summer. This was very helpful as it gave me ideas on things to do with them that I might not have thought about and also included them in the planning process. 

I still do summer lists, with Celeste only, as my oldest lives on her own and my son is away working at the army cadets camp. We try to complete as many of those wishes as we can...which as I am writing this post I realize that we haven't done many yet, besides beach days, and it's almost August! 

Check out what the other members of the Canadian Homechool Blogging Team had to share about summer learning at the Canadian Homeschooler!