Schooling through the Summer

Summer usually brings thoughts of lazy days for students who are on their nearly three month summer break. As a home schooler and an unschooler to boot, I wonder at the "summer break" mentality. One of my son's childhood friends came over during the summer, years ago when they were young, and saw my son reading a book. He was aghast! He said to my son, "You're reading a BOOK? It's summer vacation!" And that is the problem with public school. This student looked at reading as "school WORK" so reading was never a priority for him after he was in school for a few years. Schools routinely give students mandatory reading assignments of pretty boring books. You cannot mandate pleasurable reading. Sure you can MAKE them read what you want, but ultimately the student will learn to hate reading. This friend still does not read for pleasure, as fas as I know, which is sad. Reading is not something that is a chore or disagreeable. Reading should be something one does for pleasure. Who cares what you read? I like Ann McCaffrey (of the Dragonriders of Pern series) and I also like Ayn Rand. Very different but also very interesting and a pleasure to read!

Learning should happen all the time. If we stop learning, even for three months, then what the heck is life about? I do not believe that students should be forced to do worksheets over the summer, or ever, (hello, unschooler here) but I do believe that reading and learning should be something that is encouraged any time of the year!

Take your kids to the bank, and explain that the checkbook is not free money. Explain how the bank works, how the post office works and how anything works. If you don't know it yourself, then look it up together! It can be fun! After watching something on TV, can't remember what it was it was a long time ago, my kids looked up if female lions really did all the hunting but the male lions had the first choice of the food. My daughter found this particularly unjust. This was something they did together without any help from me. They were learning that, well, learning stuff was fun! My daughter was glad she is not a lioness, BTW.