Easing Back Into the New Homeschool Year

Summer is almost over.  Can you believe it?  Our local public schools start back tomorrow as well as the local Community College that Chelsea will be attending.  We have done some school all summer long, mostly reviews and a little reading and math.  The last two weeks we have taken off completely and not had any school work at all to do.  This week we will be working on easing back into our regular homeschool year.

A few years ago after a lot of frustration both on the children's part and mine I decided to go with a different approach then going from little to no school over the summer to a full schedule on the first day.  Instead I decided we were going to ease back into our school year and it worked so well we have continued with that method ever since.

What we do is start back to school with one subject at a time adding a new subject every week until we are back up to a full schedule.  We start with our afternoon school work so the children have plenty of time to get outside in the morning when it is cooler out.  We will start with math, then the next week add in writing, literature, and grammar, and the next week spelling and/or Latin. The 4th week we will add in our Bible lesson in the morning followed by history (2 days per week) and science (2 days per week.)  It takes a month to work up to a full schedule, but by then we are ready to back at it full time.

This year we have decided to have a "Not Back to School" celebration on Monday and will start in on Math on Tuesday.  I had read somewhere about the "Not Back to School" celebration and thought it was a wonderful idea.  It is a celebration for homeschoolers on the first day the public schools in their area head back to school.  We will be having a pizza party and some outdoor games.  other people choose to take their children out to breakfast or to museums or other public places that have been crowded all summer but are now empty since school is open again.

I am excited about our upcoming school year!  I am very happy with our curriculum choices and possible reviews we have coming up.  I have started making plans for our once a month Grandview science days that this year will also be combined with a once a month art co-op that I will be teaching.  There are several great field trip opportunities that are happening this fall.

I hope you have a great start to your school year!

Happy Homeschooling!