Summer’s Cool

Another repost for those of you who have been asking what summer learning looks like at our home...

Summer school can mean many different things in many different homes.  For most homeschooling moms summer school means taking time during the summer months to prepare for next year’s lessons.  For many kids summer school conjures up ideas of tedious lessons in stuffy classrooms.

I realized recently that I usually promise my kids lessons through the summer to which they groan and beg for a break.  Then we proceed with what I think is a very educational summer and they smile slyly at me on Labour Day weekend and think about how I forgot all the summer school.

Yes, I do spend time planning for the coming year.  I must confess too that I always struggle with being realistic with my planning – balancing the amount of time that we have with all of the fun and educational things that I hope to do.  But summer is also our leveling ground: the time when we can “catch up” on some of those fun things that we didn’t set aside the time for during the year.

If you have spent any time in my living room you probably know that we enjoy Charlotte Mason’s approach to education and while I am not on a crusade to convert you to our way of schooling, summer is a good time to dabble in the “gentle art of learning”.

If we can realized that education is more than the simple acquisition of knowledge and memorization of facts then we will all agree that there is much to be learned in the times when a textbook is not present.  We have learned so much by taking the time to help a younger sibling, working together in the garden, or making a collection of amazing shells during a beach day.  If we appreciate that our children need to learn to live virtuously just as much as (or more than) they need to learn to read and write then the summer is a wonderful time to do some schooling without needing to worry about lesson plans and schedules.  If we can take the time to inspire a learner to love their own little patch of garden then later in the fall when they open their textbooks again and start to learn about the life cycle of a plant they will have a friend in the garden that will make the learning so much more exciting for them.

So while the Dean family will soon stop spending a couple of hours every morning at the dining room table doing math drills and copying out Greek words, we will still be hard at work all summer long (just don’t tell the kids!)

Enjoy your summer!