Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of summer for many students. At our house, we officially hit the summer schedule in a week. The kids are looking forward to travel, rest and lots of fun. I am looking forward to preparations for the next school year and a lot of time for reading and cleaning out closets. But our entire household must look forward to a few weeks of school this summer, in order to finish this year’s reading assignments.
As I have mentioned before, we use Ambleside Online Curriculum, which utilizes the Charlotte Mason method of slow reading and narration. Because I have the kids each following their own Ambleside Year, and allow them to participate in several extracurricular activities, it is not surprising that we have readings left over at the official end of the school year.
So how does a mom provide for the finishing of schoolwork over the summer and still leave time for fun? In this post I will share two different schedules I have come up with—a half-schedule of schoolwork every day the family is home during summer, and one or two multi-week ‘sessions’ of regular school days during the summer.
First, let’s look at the half-schedule plan. Mom takes the remaining schoolwork and divides it out so that the kids are doing schoolwork for around two hours per day, maximum (a half-day, or a little less than a half-day, of school), every weekday except when the family is out of town on vacation. The advantages of this system are as follows:
1) The kids are doing just a little bit of work each day,
2) The schedule is the same every day the family is home—horizontal scheduling—which makes it easier to stay on track, and
3) Half of each day is available for work or play or spontaneous outings.
The cons of this system include:
1) The necessity of staying home for part of each day makes it more difficult to do day-long things like go to the zoo (you can just give up a half-day here and there to do day-long activities, but you must be careful not to break momentum or the kids may not finish their schoolwork by the end of summer), and
2) There is less of a ‘break’ feeling, because the kids have to focus on schoolwork every day until it is done.
We used this plan last year to finish our Ambleside readings. We went swimming almost every afternoon we were home, and that provided an impetus for the kids to get their half-schedule done each morning. I tried allowing them to swim in the morning as it got hotter, but they were usually so tired afterward that their schoolwork suffered. For us, the best way to use the half-schedule of school is to get it done in the morning.
The idea of doing multi-week sessions occurred to me this year as I realized we would need to extend our school year into the summer. Although we had time to play each day last summer, I felt that we were overburdened needing to think about school every day we were home, and I wanted to provide larger blocks of down time for the kids because they have many outside interests they would like to pursue. Also, I wish to have longer blocks of time to devote to planning for next year, as well as cleaning and organizing.
I adapted the multi-week session idea from my memories of summer school classes in the public school system where I grew up. There were three intensive sessions of summer school, each one representing a full term of work in one or another subject. Students could opt for one or more sessions. My plan for this summer is to have two three-week sessions in which we complete the remainder of the schoolwork for the year. I do not plan to have ‘intensives’, nor to allow the kids to opt-in or opt-out, but simply to have fifteen regular school days within each of the three-week sessions. These will be fitted between vacations and family visits, and we will also have two or three weeks with nothing particular scheduled.
I foresee the following advantages with the multi-week session system:
1) We will have more of a summer vacation during the non-school weeks,
2) We will be very school-focused on the days we do schoolwork, and
3) I will have more down-time for reading and planning for next year.
At this point, I can only think of the following negative:
1) It will be harder to jump into the routine at the beginning of each session
After this summer, I may have more to add to the ‘con’ side of the list, lol.
The multi-week session plan and the half-schedule of school each day we are home are two ways I have figured out to deal with schoolwork left over at the end of the school year. I see good and bad points in each system. But either way, we still find time to swim, visit family and friends and take part in activities that are not available during the school year, while completing last year’s school and getting ready for the new school year.*
*(We have had years where we came to the end of summer with readings left over, so I integrated those into the new school year. Not as much fun as finishing ahead of time, but still doable.)
