Home Schooling Year Round

In The Good Old Summertime

Growing up I attended a good Christian school at great sacrifice by my parents. I mostly enjoyed school and did well in my studies. But you want to know my very favorite time of year? The thing I craved, anticipated, and waited for anxiously all year long? Summer vacation!

I loved to look ahead to those wide open weeks and weeks and fill them with wonderful plans. I could finally stay up late, do art and cooking projects with Mother, stack firewood and work in the yard with Daddy. I fished the creek with my big brother and buried treasures in the flower bed with my little brother. There were baby animals in the summertime ~ snuggly puppies, fluffy chicks, and frisky calves. We caught lightning bugs and put them in jars, picked mustang grapes for homemade jelly, and explored miles and miles of creek and pasture. Oh, the bliss of free reading, with no dreaded homework hanging over my head! I inhaled book after lovely book, sometimes stretched out on a blanket in the deep shade of the mighty pecan trees.

Yes, summer was absolutely my favorite time of year.

Home School Beginnings

When we began home educating R, I planned our school year around the typical school schedule. We did fine, and as her teacher, I enjoyed looking forward to a nice, long summer break.

But, after a year or so I discovered a few things.

My first big discovery? It doesn't take us 180 days per year to learn one grade level's worth of school work. I also doesn't take 7 hours per day to complete one day's worth of school work. This was an interesting discovery, so I ruminated on it for the next couple of years as we went about tweaking our schedule and revamping our ideas of what our home school would look like.

My second big discovery was that R started asking to "do school" in the summers, after we'd been off for about a month. For us, schoolwork is really fun, and she craved the challenges. So, I found us doing school-like work, even during the summer, just because it was fun.

My third big discovery occurred when the boys came along. During HA's first summer we spent many, many days at the doctor's office, trying to figure out what to do about the open, running, oozing, blisters he got from mosquito bites. Yes, mosquito bites. He is allergic to mosquitos, and he is also a mosquito magnet. That summer was miserable, for all of us. But it was especially miserable for our sweet baby boy. We finally gave up trying to keep the mosquitos away from him (because we couldn't), and we just found ways to play indoors until mosquito season was over. We hoped he would outgrow it.

HW came home the next fall, and his first summer home proved that he, too, is a mosquito magnet. Even if there are no mosquitos within a mile, one will travel to find my boys, and bite them repeatedly. Then, the bites will get ugly. Every time.

And it wasn't just mosquitos causing the problems around here. Any stinging insect was big trouble~ fire ants, wasps, bees, etc. After one very long night in the ER with HA after a yellow jacket sting swelled his ear up to the size of a cantaloup, I had a serious change of heart about "blissful summertime." Old childhood memories of fun summers began to fade.

Gradually I began to remember things about my childhood ~ things I probably forgot on purpose. Here in Texas, summer is full of dripping sweat, sunburns, stinging insects, biting ants, and poison ivy that is so healthy it forms a trunk you could climb up. The heat and humidity where we live are sweltering.  The snakes are busy and numerous. It was food for thought, but for some reason I continued to work our school around a long summer break. I guess I stuck with it so long simply because that is what we had always done, and that was what I knew. Silly me.

Unintentional Switch

Fast forward to last year. We came home from Ethiopia with sweet Baby S in January. We purposefully  took several months to adjust to our new normal, then when summer rolled around we were all ready to buckle down to school again. So, we did. And it worked out beautifully. Wisely, we spent those blazing hot, insect-filled days around good books and figuring math problems and studying maps. And we spent no more long nights in the ER.

When late fall came, and the cooler temperatures drove away the wasps and the sun no longer burned a hole through your shirt, we were ready to play outside a lot and start those farm projects we had planned, and enjoy the nice weather. So, we did. We ditched school during the most gorgeous weather, then were all ready to buckle down again in a few weeks. We worked hard on schoolwork all through the rainy season. Then we broke for the Christmas holiday and had a nice, long stretch of celebrating with family and playing games late into the night, and drinking hot cocoa and warming by the fire and reading books aloud together. And sprinkled all along, there were many, many sunny, cool winter days that beckoned us outside. So, we closed our books and went. And we did all those fun summertime things without snakes, mosquitos, or poison ivy getting in our way.

Slow Learner

Obviously, I'm a little slow on the uptake. But, here I am, all these years later, and I think I finally get it. Summer around here is just a great time for our family to concentrate on school work~ it's usually too hot to do anything else, and the insects inflict so much misery that they chase us indoors much of the time anyway. And Fall, Winter, and Spring are sprinkled with long stretches of perfectly pleasing days that are just begging for us to play hooky. Since we can take advantage of it, it's only right that we should!

Sure, we will use our share of sunscreen and deet this summer, since everybody needs a few hot dog roasts and some time running through the sprinkler. And we'll definitely log lots of hours in the "pool." But I'm finally OK with the idea that we don't have to cram all our outdoor fun into June, July, and August. We'll just save most of that outdoor bliss for the other 9 months of the year.

The past few weeks  have been especially gorgeous around here ~ positively stunning weather! And we've been enjoying it immensely. The kids have paddled in the tank, dug in the dirt, picked flowers, climbed trees, and read page after page of their favorite books spread on a blanket under the mighty pecans. They've done nature drawings, watched birds, and gardened. They rode their bikes this morning, and they'll play tag this afternoon. And that's just the way it should be.

"Everybody complains about the weather,

 but nobody does anything about it."

 Charles D. Warner

This change of mind-set has been good for my soul in many ways. I have a big fault ~ I like control. I like to plan things, and I like it when things go as I planned. But I should know by now that God does some of His best work in my life when I am off-balance and therefore, leaning more on Him. The weather is something we certainly can't control ~ when I plan my school year each fall, I have no idea when those stunning days of perfection will pop up along the way.

So, sometimes when it rains for a week during an early springtime school break, then we need to take advantage of the opportunity and dig back into school. And if the beautiful fall weather dissolves into frigid cold that is no fun for exploring the creek, then we need to use that chance to get ahead in our studies. And, by the same token, if the busy week of school work that I had planned is interrupted by glorious skies and puffy clouds and butterflies, then the books go back on the shelf and outside we go!

So, I can finally, finally say it out loud: We home school year-round. Whew. Now that feels better.