I don't know about you, but I look at life as a learning experience. Everywhere we go can be made into some sort of teachable moment or segue to a whole weeks worth of learning on a particular topic.
It seems lately, with school being out for the summer that I'm getting a lot of questions about how I home school and if we are "on vacation" like kids that go to "regular" school.
A friend recently commented that since her daughter was now done with preschool, we must be too. That is not the case. While we may have backed off the structured book work; we still do a far amount as well as practice writing and reading. We are also always on the go and each place we go, I find something to teach them about and we go to the library and research or hop on-line and find more information about.
As a parent, I've always felt I was the most important teacher in my kids lives. Even if I had decided on traditional school, I'd still be doing this stuff in the summers with them for retention. It is interesting to see how other parents feel and what they do (or don't do) for time off school.
What about you? What do you do for school breaks? If you are homeschooling do you take a vacation period or do you just keep on going? If your child goes to traditional school do you work with them in the summer or do you take a hands off approach?
you raise some good questions about summer vs. school time. my daughters are grown so i am not personnally a home school parent, but I think about it a lot. I think that it might be good to make summer a little bit different just becasue its fun to "feel" like your switching gears. even if you had a sign that said "summer vacation learning" and kept a fun list of ideas and places you want to do and go. then when school starts, replace the sign with "Schooltime fun learning ideas" and add on to the list. Kind of a psychological thing to reinforce the idea of 'change' (who doesn't love a season change?) yet keep the idea of "learning is fun." just a thought.
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