A year-round homeschool appeals to a lot of people, until they realize that it means being a drill-sergeant that brutally attacks and kills summer.
You can listen to this post here:
But, wait! There is a way to homeschool throughout the whole year WITHOUT killing summer-time vibes! Unschoolers have mastered teaching throughout the year with little push-back. Here I will share a minimalist homeschooling technique that more traditional schoolers can use for a year-round homeschool with ease, and without any extra stress… and without children becoming resentful that you are sabotaging their beautiful summer days.
Actually, I use this technique during long vacations, the winter holidays, and after new babies are born. Basically, anytime life gets crazy, school doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. You don’t have to abandon all of your plans and priorities.
Put Looping on Hyper-Drive
That’s right, we’re going to use a version of a looping schedule during the summer. In a looping schedule, enrichment subjects are listed in a specific order like: religion, history, science, art, and Latin. Then, as time allows, those subjects are taught after core subjects are completed for the day. Once the last subject on the list is taught, you start back up on the first subject and progress through the list again – over and over again.
But, in order for this looping concept to help us in a year-round homeschool, we really have to make the looping all-inclusive, more specific, and much more dramatic. So, it’s a little stranger than just “looping,” and therefore, I’ve given it a new name. Drumroll, please…
Accumulate School Days
Here’s how it works:
First, make your standard homeschooling schedule.
Make a lesson plan and schedule for one season, with each lesson spelled out for specific days of the week. This should look like a pretty typical lesson plan that moves your children gracefully and productively through their education. I will offer a few tips for tweaking it at the end of this post, but let’s start here.
Hopefully, as you’re creating your lesson plans, you’re using minimalist homeschooling techniques, so that your lessons are simple, yet highly effective, and totally on-target for your values, goals, and priorities. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.) If you’re curious about these important details, there are many blog posts you can read, or there is a book about Minimalist Homeschooling that will walk you through the finer points of setting up a schedule, but I won’t go over all of that here.
Second, remove all dates and times.
Now that you have your schedule for the next season set-up, the second step is to remove any dates, times, days of the week, or other chronological times you may have used to label your schedule. Cross them out, or erase them, but please throw any specific dates and times on your schedule out the window at this point.
Instead, label your lesson plan with a generic week number, and the day numbers. As in, the first Monday-Friday would be “Week 1,” and the first Monday would be “Day 1.”
Third, stay calm and keep learning.
When you year-round homeschool, you follow your lesson plans as you can. That is, start with the first items listed on Day 1 during Week 1, and stop when you need to stop. When you school again, pick-up where you left off. Once your student has completed all of the lessons on Day 1, move on to the first lesson on Day 2, and continue those lessons as time allows.
It may take 5 days to get through one day of schoolwork, or you may complete 2 days of schoolwork in one day.
In this way, your lesson plan acts as a map of what to do next during your “free time.” You know, that down time between trips to the pool, weeding the garden, visiting the zoo, or meeting friends at the park. Your lesson plans are simply your reminder of what you can do to keep moving forward a little each day, but they are not meant to pressure you into racing through a checklist of items within a certain time-frame.
In this way, you will “accumulate” school days. That is, every time you complete the lessons on a day of your lesson plans, you have completed one day of school. As the summer progresses, so will your child’s education.
This is probably a good time to mention the 32nd Minimalist Homeschooling Mindset Hack from the book: Lessons are dictated by your time and values, not by a resource.
How to Tweak your Lessons for a Year-Round Homeschool that Accumulates Days
>You might also like to read about batching for minimalist homeschool planning
1. Consider keeping a routine.
In order to not feel like a drill-sergeant, I set the expectation that we’ll get a few things done while all of the neighborhood kids are inside from the heat. As a result, we like to school during the hottest parts of the day, so our summer routine means doing a few things after lunch each day. Consider when you and your kids naturally want to be indoors, or resting.
2. Double-up on subjects in a single day of lesson plans.
If your student(s) will benefit from regular review of some subjects, put them on each day’s lesson plan twice. For example, I include a math lesson at the beginning of the lesson plan, and math review or math drills later in that same day’s lesson plans. I may assign specific reading on a subject earlier in the day’s lesson plans with a written narration, and then independent reading and copywork later on that same day. Why? Well, because I want to increase the odds that my children will be reading, writing and doing math most days. You get to decide what you’d like your child to spend their time on, but adjust your lesson plans a bit to accommodate for more breaks and a slower pace in a year-round homeschool, without threatening emerging skills.
3. Shift to reading a lot.
Keep a family read aloud, or “school” reading for each child in your to-go bag. My kids love a chapter in the shade, or while we’re waiting for a meal at a restaurant. My older kids will read on a car-ride, and my younger ones want to read while their brothers have practices. There are so many opportunities to read quality, educational, and enjoyable material without reserving a single minute of summer just for that. You can accumulate all sorts of “schooling” just by having a carefully curated book list that covers a variety of subjects during the summer.
4. Journal.
This is similar to the advice to include lots of reading during the summer. I find that the summer lends itself to journaling and open-ended writing time. Use rainy days to edit the work-in-progress. Doesn’t quiet time for reading and journaling after lunch sound divine on hot summer days? If it suits your goals and priorities, be open to the most enjoyable method.
5. Field trips, games, assemblies, PE, movies, music, crafts, art, woodworking, chess, computer lab… these are all things that happen in a “traditional” school.
Take the summer to explore an elective that you may not do during the rest of the year. Where I live, I don’t want to leave the house for almost 6 months because it’s cold and I’m a sissy about it, so we stock up on field trips while the weather is nice.
6. Leave an “open day.”
Since so much impromptu learning happens during the summer, I leave one day of the week completely blank. In that space, I write the educational activities that happen that were not planned. Did your child spend time on an educational app you didn’t plan? Or, perhaps they did an impromptu experiment or play? Maybe they baked, sewed, watched, read, painted, or discussed something that was not on your list? Write it on that EMPTY day, and see how FULL their education is. I have found that my children will easily fill-up an entire day’s worth of schooling with their own ideas by the time we complete 4 days’ worth of lessons that I planned. This may inspire you to become an unschooler!
7. Be flexible.
Like I said before, use your lessons as a path to follow – specifically, a path that you can follow leisurely. It is not a checklist.
A Warning
If you don’t want to kill summer – for yourself or your children – calm down. Adjust your expectations.
Using this technique, you will NOT get as much done during the summer as you do during the rest of the year. BUT you will definitely get more done than you would if you took the whole summer off with no plans and no records. And, you will get it done relatively painlessly.
This means that you will have a little less pressure during the rest of the school year, because you used a few summer hours wisely to accumulate a few extra school days.
So, how do you year-round homeschool without killing summer? Have you ever “accumulated school days” before? Are you going to try? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments…
PS – If you are more visual, I did create a YouTube video explaining this technique and how we use it in our year-round homeschool. Specifically, the video talks about applying it during the busy holiday season. You can check that out (and my other videos) here.
We have a facebook group of minimalist homeschoolers who are dedicated to creating an intentional education without the stress that comes from trying to “do it all.” You are always welcome to come join the conversation there.
I wrote a book on Minimalist Homeschooling that is a step-by-step guide to creating your own minimalist homeschool based on your values and priorities. If you’re looking for more guidance, and some worksheets to get it all put in place, you can find that book on Amazon.
Wishing you all of the simple things,
Zara
