Summer School Summary

With most public and private schools starting school (the local public school starts this week, most schools in the surrounding cities started a couple of weeks ago), we are just wrapping up our summer school. I’m hoping to get in another five days of work – or a week and a half of “real time” for us. (We have doctor’s appointments that will take up one day this week and we are taking a day for a field trip, so we will only get in three days of “school” this week.) Then, I’ll have anywhere from a few days to a week or so to complete “baby preparations.”

We will then be taking a school break for eight weeks or so – until the first part of November, hopefully. The plan is that we’ll start back up slowly, ramping up to “full school” by January. It will be difficult to cover a full year of school in a half a year’s time, but our summer schooling has given us a real head start.

For the eldest, we will be 41% (finishing Chapter 2 of 5) complete in Growing With Grammar 3, 28% complete (Week 10 of 36) in Writing With Ease 2, and 20% complete in A Beka 3 Arithmetic (Lesson 35 out of 170).

For Child #2, we will be on roughly Lesson 75 or 76 out of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (100EL). When we restart school, we’ll skip the rest of 100EL and go right into Spell to Write and Read (SWR) which we started during the previous school year. She’s zipping right along in A Beka 1 Arithmetic as she is currently on Lesson 45 of 170 – representing 26% completion of the book.

We have not started our science or history studies yet, but have a plan to complete those by the end of June or so, depending on when we get restarted this fall. By the end of the traditional school year in Spring 2010, we should only have history, science, and perhaps some math still to go to complete our delayed school year.

The children think it is funny when adults stop them to ask why they aren’t “in school” because they have been “doing school” all summer. It will be more interesting to see what they say when they are asked in a month or two why they aren’t “in school.” I am sure they will continue to be looked at askance as the oldest definitely looks “school age.”

School year planning

We usually start our “traditional school year” right after Labor Day. That day is approaching quickly, so I’m posting an update on how planning is going – even though we aren’t going to start then.

Lesson plans (each on individual subject sheets) are done for those subjects that I thought needed them – History, Religion, Science, Map Skills, etc. I didn’t do any for math this year as it is easy enough just to “do the next lesson” with a little bit of pre-planning either the night before or the weekend before for the hands-on manipulatives or up-on-the-white-board work. Grammar (GWG 3) and Writing (WWE 2) will also be “do the next lesson” type of lessons with no need for lesson plans.

We like to use quite a few “living books” for our history studies in conjunction with Story of the World. Thus, I spend several hours during the summer at the local library combing through the card catalog for related books for each chapter. (Our small local library does not have an internet-reachable online card catalog, so one has to physically be at one of the library’s two computers to search their card catalog.) I am just under over half-way done with my search (Chapter 19 22 of 42).

This year, we joined a library about an hour+ from us (paying the “out of area” fee) in order to have access to more books. I am only one-fourth of the way through this search as I have more “hits” at the bigger library system. However, I can do this searching from home using our internet connection.

Both sets of searches require me to carve out time away from the children – a difficult task this summer as my spouse has been working many (MANY) extra hours and those he is home, we like to spend as a family (usually doing an outside activity).

I have my organizational notebook started and as I am in a state which has some homeschool reporting requirements, I have my “letter” from the state officials in hand.

So, why aren’t we going to start after Labor Day as usual? Why will this “school year” be different than our others so far? Well, you see, I’m due to deliver our fifth child in the middle of September. So, I don’t really want to “start school” and then stop it again for those first several bleary-eyed weeks of newborn-ness. We’ll be waiting to start “school” in earnest until after I feel up to running the day-to-day household and managing school – hopefully in October for at least some of the subjects and November for the full fledged schedule.

There’s your update on school planning at the Learning As I Go homestead.

I need a rest from my vacation!

When we got back from our camping trip, I was exhausted. We really got off easy. The only sunburns were my husband and I on our noses. The hundreds of mosquito bites seem to have healed. (I’ve never seen a mosquito with a half-dollar size wingspan before. WOW!)  No one came home any worse for the unsanitary lack-of-proper-toilet conditions.

• All the laundry is caught up.
• One of the tents still needs to be unpacked and repacked as it is in three parts instead of the original one bag.
• I need to clean out one of the coolers still and get it back to its owner.
• The formerly clean van needs to be re-cleaned and vacuumed to rid it of trip debris.
• I need to put away the bags we used for clothing as they are sitting empty on my floor right now.

I need a vacation since coming home on our trip!

Anyway, we’ve since restarted summer school, gotten to the pool (which is thankfully still open), pulled just about everything out of the garden because the plants were either done producing or the produce was being eaten by insects/worms/etc., and had a very productive local homeschool group planning meeting for the first half of the upcoming school year.

Back to the grind! Other upcoming posts may include something on how my planning is going for this school year, how this school year will be different from my others so far, and wrapping up summer school with how our new curriculum choices have fared with my kids.