Summer School

"Do you do school during the summer?" 

The question comes up often enough, I have begun to rehearse my answer, so I don't sound too weird or preachy. It depends on what you mean by "doing school". If you're thinking desks and chairs and workbooks and all that, then no. I'm as done with that as the kids are. 

But if "doing school" is continuing to learn and experience and try stuff, of course we do! In fact, I totally ramp it up as much as we can take. 

We do all kinds of nature and conservation stuff: weather, insects, plant recognition, whatever. We travel a bit, we read the news (and I explain it to the kids who don't get it). We watch interesting documentaries (yes, there is such a thing) and quirky stuff we online we didn't have time for during the regular school year. There is scouting and camping and gardening and crafting and reading and stargazing and story telling and make-believe. Anything that expands our understanding and broadens our horizons, we're doing it. 

This bunch of kids I have, they never stop soaking stuff up. You can't "take the summer off" unless you turn your brain off. They never aren't paying attention. Granted, they don't always pay attention to what I want them to focus on, but they are definitely focused on one thing or another. So, in the summer, we don't stop learning. We just change focus. Life becomes one perpetual field trip.

Is that summer school? It just sounds like living life to me. I dunno, what do you do with your summer? 

Gabriella doing her typing (see the timer? serious business, here).

Oh. Well. There is math. I do make my kids do math all summer long. And typing. I keep at math because they lose so much if I let them off the hook. It takes the better part of the first semester to get them back up to speed if we take the summer off from math. And the typing is because I can. They need it, it's easy, I can use it as a requirement ("Yes, you can play with Whats-her-face, as soon as you've done 30 minutes of typing."  "You want to earn some computer time? OK, do 5 skills in math."). This way, not all responsibility flies out the window...just a smidgen. 

Anyway, I guess that's the long answer. I need to practice the wise and pithy short version.