Up next in 10
Chatty video where I share my homeschool summer plans. Which curriculum are we almost done with and what will we continue through the summer?
MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO:
⭐ Not Consumed Devotionals — https://blessedhomeschool.com/notconsumed
⭐ Latin Curriculum — https://id.memoriapress.com//idevaffiliate.php?id=272
⭐ Summer Printables — https://blessedhomeschool.com/product/alphabet-activity-pack-summer-theme/
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Hey there! I’m Sara, and I’m a teacher-turned-homeschooling mom to 4 kiddos (including a set of twins!). I balance homeschooling while working full-time from home, and am so thankful you are here.
I love sharing about homeschooling on my blog, Blessed Homeschool, where you’ll find tips, resources, and curriculum reviews. Whether you are a newbie or a veteran, I hope you will leave inspired and equipped with what you find.
⚡DISCOUNT CODES ⚡
• 20% off Homeschool Hall with code BLESSEDHOMESCHOOL — https://homeschoolhall.com/activity-journal?aff=blessedhomeschool
• 20% off one item from Homeschool Style Co. with code YOUTUBE20 — https://www.homeschoolstyleco.com
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Hey you guys, welcome back to my channel for another video. Today we are going to chat about summer
0:07
homeschooling plans. If you're new here, my name is Sarah. I'm homeschooling mom to four kids
0:18
My oldest is going to be in seventh grade next year. I've got twin daughters who will be in sixth grade
0:24
and then I have a five-year-old who will be doing kindergarten next year. So I just wanted to take a
0:30
minutes to come on here and share with you guys my thoughts about homeschooling over the summer
0:35
what we are going to be doing. I feel I'm a little bit late kind of getting this out there and
0:40
talking about this. We only have a couple of weeks left until we are all done. So I've just
0:45
been thinking about it a lot lately and figured that I would share this with you. Now, we are not
0:51
year-round homeschoolers. When I think about that in a traditional sense, I picture it to mean
0:57
you spread your main curriculum out over the whole year and then you kind of take longer breaks
1:03
throughout the year. So you continue your typical schedule, your typical routine throughout the
1:08
summer. You just have kind of bigger breaks throughout the year. That's what I think of when I think
1:12
of year-round homeschooling. We definitely take a break from our main routine, but there are still a few
1:19
things that I like to keep doing and keep up with throughout the summer so that we don't lose
1:24
certain skills so that we can kind of stay in somewhat of a routine. And it's not as big of a shock
1:30
when we start up again in the fall. But we also still need that break. My kids need that break
1:36
I need that break. I like a longer break in the summer. I like having kind of an end goal in mind
1:45
like an end date. So we're going to be finished with our main curriculum here. And then we start
1:50
our new summer thing and then we'll start homeschool again in the fall. It just helps me to
1:56
refresh a little bit, helps me to relax a little bit more and just get my mind ready for what
2:02
we're going to be doing in the upcoming new homeschool year in the fall. So we typically start
2:08
our main homeschool year in August. August is when we'll have our big first day of school. And we
2:15
will typically go through the end of May and then our big summer break then is going to
2:20
be June and July. Now we homeschool in Missouri. So in July, that's when we can start tracking
2:27
our homeschool hours. So anything we do in July, we can count towards those hours. Anything we
2:33
do that's educational. So this summer is going to look a little bit different in the past
2:39
Sometimes I would start our school year a little bit earlier or I would kind of have just a slow
2:45
build into the school year. So I might start some of our curriculum the first week of
2:50
July. And then the second week, I would add on another piece. So like let's say we start math
2:55
the first week of July. Then second week we would do math and language arts. Third week
3:01
math, language arts, history, and so on. So we kind of build up to it. And then by the time we got
3:06
to August, we would be kind of in our full routine already. So I used to do that. This year
3:12
we're going to be continuing some of those things throughout the summer. So I don't know that we're
3:19
necessarily going to take that approach this year. But it is a good approach to take if you've got
3:25
the flexibility and you want to do that. You have a lot of little pieces of your curriculum that
3:31
you're doing. It's a great idea to kind of slowly build up to that full routine. When my kids were
3:36
younger, we absolutely did pretty much take the entire summer off. So we would, I used my father's
3:44
world and we would finish the curriculum. We would take our summer break until we started
3:49
in the fall. And then when they got a little bit older and we were using BJU Press that when we would kind of do more of that slow role because that curriculum was good to kind of build build up into And now this year that they even older I finding
4:07
myself wanting to make sure that they're still doing math. And we're doing Latin. So I want to make
4:14
sure that they're still doing Latin over the summer, keeping up their vocabulary, making sure
4:17
they're having things memorized and things like that. So it's kind of changed and evolved
4:23
over the years and with everything in homeschooling, it's never, it doesn't have to be the same every
4:28
year. I don't think it really has been the same for us every year. Every year you just kind of
4:33
figure out what's going to work for you and your kids and you have the flexibility to do that. So
4:39
the main things that we're going to be doing over the summer, all right? We are going to
4:44
finish up our my father's world curriculum probably in a couple of weeks. We're actually almost done
4:49
I think I have maybe two more weeks left with that curriculum. And then a couple of other
4:53
things are going to take us through the end of May. But I have a hard date. I've scheduled everything
4:59
in so that we are done by the end of May. We're in a good groove. So I kind of know that's going to
5:06
be our ending date. So then once June starts, we are going to continue with our, I was looking
5:13
around like, I don't have curriculum for this. We do it online. We're going to be continuing with
5:19
CTC math. So every day in the summer, my kids are going to
5:23
to have a short math lesson. So I will continue to assign these to them
5:28
And this is gonna be a great way for them to keep up their math routine
5:34
and just to keep up those skills that they're using. You know, with CTC math, they've got their new lessons
5:41
but they also have practice that's built in that kind of cycles them through stuff
5:45
that they've already learned. So every week they're getting something new and they're also getting practice on old stuff
5:52
that they have done. So we're going to continue that. We're going to have one math lesson every day that they will work on
5:59
And I think that's going to be a really good option for us. The other thing that we're going to do is work on our Latin
6:05
So we just finished up first form Latin with our homeschool co-op
6:11
So we use first form Latin with Memorial Press. And this year I noticed, I don't think this is new
6:16
They probably already always have had it. But I just noticed it this year. They have a first form Latin review
6:23
I figured this is perfect, this is great. I kind of counted up the lessons, and we are going to be able to fit in about maybe just two days a week is all that it's going to take us to get through this review
6:37
So two days a week of Latin. Okay, my kids each have their own workbook, and I have a workbook too because I've been learning it with them and doing this with them
6:46
So we're going to work through this over the summer. and then we're also going to be continuing to work on Latin vocabulary
6:55
So this is my little box here of our first form Latin vocabulary flashcards
7:01
I purchased these from a Moria Press, the little flashcards that come with the lesson
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but you can certainly make your own. I got this little box off of Amazon, and there's actually two boxes
7:14
So this is only maybe about half of the flashcards. But what I liked is these, I actually got this idea from someone else online when I saw it
7:23
but these, it was in a forum somewhere, but these boxes came in a set
7:27
They had blue, red, and green. And those colors match up perfectly with the Memorial Press Latin series
7:36
So blue is for our first form, and then I've got red ready to go for second form next year
7:42
and then green for when we get to third form. But I'll just show you real quick
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I found this idea from someone else online as well. I don't remember who, but if you're
7:51
studying either vocabulary or Bible memory or studying a foreign language or anything like that I love using this method for kind of reviewing your cards
8:02
So I don't know if you can see it, but I have little tabs that I made in here. I don't think that's going to focus very well, but the first tab says current
8:10
So the cards that we are currently working on are going to go in this first part right here
8:16
And then after you work on those, I have three other tabs that say review one
8:22
review two and review three. So each week we're going through a new lesson, which is going to go in our
8:32
current sections. We're reviewing vocab from that lesson. Once we're done with that, I'm going to
8:37
split those cards up. Some of them go in front of review one, some in front of review two, and some
8:42
in front of review three. Ones in the back here are ones that we haven't reviewed at all yet
8:47
We've learned that. We just haven't reviewed on this summer. So then
8:52
every day we'll go over all the vocab from our current section and then we'll choose one of the review
9:00
sections to go through so every day they're doing new vocab and then reviewing something that they've done
9:07
the previous week so it's just a good way to a good system to help yourself review vocabulary and
9:15
finding it very helpful so we're going to do this probably every day during the summer just to make
9:21
sure we keep our vocabulary fresh. The other thing that we will be doing are our Bible studies. So I
9:29
showed this in another one of my videos, but I do have quite a few of the not consumed Bible studies
9:36
that my kids can choose from. And we like to use these over the summer when we're on break from
9:42
our Bible study fellowship. So I will let my kids choose from one of the Bible studies that we have
9:48
and they'll be able to work on that. And then I have my own Bible study that I'll be doing as well
9:54
and we can kind of work on that together. So what I'm envisioning, you know
9:58
my kids will work on their CTC math in the morning. They can do that on their own
10:03
And then we can come together around the table. We'll work on Latin together. Won't take very long
10:08
We'll do our Bible study together. That won't take very long either
10:11
And those are the main things that I think we'll make sure that we get done
10:16
most days of the week. And that, of course, leaves plenty of time for all the other fun things that we want to do
10:22
And then we're also going to be continuing our family read aloud. This is just a great tradition that we started years ago
10:30
And there are a couple of read alouds from our curriculum this year that we haven't finished that I want to make sure that we get through
10:37
I also picked up at a local homeschool convention, some books from the Tuttle Twins
10:42
And I'm looking forward to reading those aloud with my kids. We're going to see how that goes
10:47
if they work well as read aloud. Great. If not, I might just have my kids read those on their own
10:53
Let's see. A couple of other things that are kind of loose plans. One of them, my son has been mentioning
11:00
that he really wants to start taking some coding lessons or coding classes. My husband is a software
11:06
engineer. My son has been, he's really into computers, really into a lot of things involving them
11:13
So he's mentioned he wants to take some coding classes. So we've been looking into
11:17
some options for him for that. We are thinking we might go with Code Wizard's HQ. They have some
11:22
great summer classes online. So I need to kind of figure out what exactly we're going to do
11:29
But most likely he'll be doing some kind of coding classes just because it's something that he has
11:36
expressed interest in. The summer is going to give us a little bit more flexibility so he can try
11:41
this out. And then we'll decide if that's something we want to continue during the school year or
11:46
how often we want to kind of pursue that. My daughter who loves art I bought art curriculum for her for next year but she been asking a lot about it And so I also going to probably let her just kind of start that and take that at her own pace
12:02
If she wants to kind of start working through that, she can kind of do that on her own
12:06
So that'll be something informal that we're doing as well. And then my kindergartner really, he loves to learn
12:15
And he really wants to continue his learning as well. He is asking me, you know, he really wants to learn how to read, keep learning about his letters and how to actually how to read. So he was just asking me about that today. So we obviously have the kindergarten curriculum that I have for him for the fall, but I also have some old reading curriculum that I've used in the past. So I don't know. I might pull that out and just see how he does with it. See if that, you know, might work throughout the summer if he likes that. I don't know. We'll give it a go. But he's, he's, I don't know. We'll give it a go
12:49
he's asking about it. So that might be something that we throw in there as well. Nothing too formal
12:54
but, you know, I don't want to not do it if it's something that he really wants to learn and is
13:00
excited about. And on that note, I do have, I want to show you guys, I do have a printable on my
13:06
website that I might also kind of use with him to help him just keep working on his letters
13:12
his letter sounds, maybe even starting some of those reading skills. This is a printable. I didn't
13:18
print out the cover page, but it's basically a summer alphabet activities pack. So if you have
13:24
preschoolers, if you have little kids, this might be something fun that you can do with them over
13:28
the summer. It just has a bunch of different alphabet card words. So it is a printable where you've
13:34
got a lot of different pictures of different things. And then you also have all of the letters. You
13:40
have uppercase and lowercase on these cards that you can cut out and use. So some of the
13:48
ways that you can use these. I get some examples on here that your kids can match the picture
13:53
with the beginning sound that it makes. So they can work on matching those letters to the picture
13:59
based on their beginning sounds or even their ending sounds. They can look at a picture
14:06
say the word, and then practice counting how many syllables are in the word. They can spell out the
14:11
picture with the letter cards. There's only, you know, some of these have double letters
14:15
so you might not be able to do all of them. But if, you know, they're able to do that
14:19
if they're a little bit older, that might work. Put the letter cards in alphabetical order
14:24
and then you can do the same thing with the picture cards, matching uppercase and lowercase, and so on
14:29
So this is just an easy printable that you can use if you want something fun and summer themed to use with your kids
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If you can use it, it's on my blog. I will leave a link in the description below
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I do typically sell it for just three bucks. but actually in a couple of weeks, it'll be for free to people who are on my email list
14:51
It's part of a promotion that I'm doing with some other bloggers. So if you aren't on my newsletter list, go to bless homeschool.com and sign up
14:59
And then in just a couple of weeks, you will get a promo for that and you can get it for free
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Or like I said, it's just three bucks on the website if you think is something that you want to download and use with your kids
15:10
All right, you guys, that is it short and sweet video. That's what we're doing for our homeschool this summer
15:15
I'm really looking forward to summer. I'm looking forward to the beautiful weather, being outside more
15:21
just taking that break and having that time to get refreshed for the fall. And I just can't wait
15:27
So I hope you guys have some fun summer plans too. I would love to hear about them. Do you want to share anything in the comments below about how you spend your summer? Do you go homeschool year round
15:36
Do you take a break? Do you have things that you're going to keep up during the summer? Let me know
15:40
Do you like this video? Give it a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe to my channel so you don't miss out on future content
15:45
I will see you guys next time
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