Summer Field Trips for Homeschoolers – Part Three

The final part of the Summer Field Trip Ideas for Homeschoolers series will focus on fun activities.

Although many of these activities will have an associated cost, they will definitely score big points with your children, one of the reasons they are on our list of summer field trips for homeschoolers.

These activities can range from miniature golf courses and rock climbing walls to horseback riding, sailing and roller skating.

First, determine if you want your summer field trip for your homeschoolers to focus on physical exercise or just plain fun.  If you choose exercise, think about kayaking, skating, boating, waterskiing, horseback riding and, for older children, even scuba diving!

If fun is more what you are looking for, consider water parks, amusement parks, and state fairs.  Many parks and state fairs offer a day that is discounted to the local population or offered with the purchase of meals or drinks at local restaurants.  Sometimes even “big box” stores such as Wal-Mart will have discount coupons at their check-out lanes for local events.

Remember, for the most successful summer field trip for your homeschooler, call ahead to determine hours and availability of food and drinks and, most importantly, have fun!

Summer Field Trips for Homeschoolers – Part Two

This second part of the Summer Field Trip Ideas for Homeschoolers series will focus on plays and performances.

One of the very best summer field trip ideas for homeschoolers is a place where they can get an up close look at the performing arts.  Check your local listings for theater arts groups, puppet theaters, dance theaters, and auditoriums.  Many agencies that promote local performing arts are happy to offer discounted tickets to educational groups.

When choosing performing arts as a summer field trip idea for your homeschoolers, please keep in mind appropriateness of the subject matter for the age of children you are escorting.  Some performances that would be perfectly understandable to teens might go right over the heads of an elementary school group.

Finally, remember the musical arts when planning your list of summer field trip ideas for your homeschoolers.  Many towns have local symphonies and most towns even boast a youth symphony that might be instrumental in getting your children interested in playing an instrument of their own.  Youth symphonies in particular are amenable to allowing homeschoolers and other groups a more in-depth look into the “behind-the-scenes” activities of a symphony, making them a veritable must-have on your summer field trip list!

Summer Field Trips for Homeschoolers

Some great ideas for summer field trips ideas for homeschoolers will have them enjoying themselves as well as bringing joy to others.  I always like to ask my homeschoolers to get involved in at least one community service field trip project each summer.

One of the best summer field trips for homeschoolers for community service purposes is a trip to a local retirement or nursing home.  If it is a small home, the children might be able to visit with individual residents and read to them, play a board game, or play music (if they play an instrument).   Many of the residents of these homes have little or no contact with the “outside world” and are longing for a visit and some personalized attention.  Sometimes, they do not even have knowledge of the current events in the town or world around them.  They love hearing the news from children, just be mindful to share only positive happenings from the community to brighten their day.

Another way a homeschool group can make a retirement home visit into a great summer field trip is to arrange to do a group project with the residents.  Some activities that are always a hit with the residents include sing-a-longs, exercise sessions, and watching the children perform a play.

With both elderly residents and homeschoolers sharing and caring for one another, I think there is no doubt that this summer field trip for your homeschoolers might just be the most rewarding trip of the year!

May Teaching Themes for Homeschool

May teaching themes for homeschool are so abundant that it is hard to choose just a few.  In fact, it might be fun to choose some of the more unusual events in the month for your May teaching theme.  A great example is Eliza Doolittle Day.  Literary buffs will remember Eliza as the Cockney protagonist in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.  This is a fabulous way to introduce older children to this literary gem, while younger children can watch My Fair Lady to get the idea of the story.

A interesting May teaching theme for your homeschool is the story of the Wright brothers.  Their airplane was patented on May 22 and changed the world of transportation forever.  Trips to aviation parks, movies, or air shows would be a wonderful adjunct to this theme.

Lewis and Clark began their fateful expedition on May 14th, which presents the opportunity for an active, outdoorsy May teaching theme. Engage children in their adventure by having them create their own specimen box and take a hiking trip to find new flora and fauna to identify.

Round out your May teaching themes with a service project.  May 30th is National Senior Health and Fitness Day.  Volunteer at a nursing or retirement home and lead the seniors in gentle exercises or outdoor games.  A slow, gentle walk for those who are ambulatory will leave both your students and the seniors rejuvenated and happy.

Summer Writing Ideas for Children

Summer doesn’t exactly conjure up images of pen and paper, but there are many summer writing ideas for children that will keep them excited about the season.

1. Dream Vacation

Search the internet for photographs of interesting places and have your child choose one that, if they could,  they would like to visit during summer vacation.  Have them write about their imaginary travel there; describing the people, the weather and the sights.  They can even invent an imaginary place from the photograph and name it, map it, and write about it!

2.  Weather or Not

Another great prompt to keep summer pens busy uses an imaginary situation. What if the mythological gods of weather decided to remove summer from the rotation of seasons?  What would happen to the other seasons? To crops and businesses? To people’s lifestyles?  How would things change in general?  Would they be better, or worse?

3.  Some Like It Hot

One really interesting summer writing idea for children is the notion that some people love sultry, hot, humid days while others can’t wait for the first snowfall.  Which one does your child prefer?  Why?  What would they do if there was only hot (or only cold) weather?

All of these summer writing ideas for children are geared toward fun, imaginative, easy writing — a perfect formula to keep kids engaged and interested all summer long.

Benefits of Summer Homeschool – Part III

One of the most significant benefits to summer homeschool is that there is a greater opportunity for creativity in lessons.  When lessons are creative and the atmosphere is stress-free, children are most likely to develop a love of learning for it’s own sake.

During summer homeschool, lessons can be planned around fun activities that are only available in the summer — farmer’s markets, outdoor festivals, and water activities to name just a few.

You can even turn the family vacation into a lesson effortlessly if you plan ahead.  For example, a trip to Oregon’s Mount Hood or Yellowstone Park can morph into a great lesson on volcanoes, National Parks, ecology, botany or even conservation.  Getting to and from your destination opens up opportunity to discuss geography, transportation issues, logistics and even math.  A trip to the beach can encompass marine biology, erosion, weather patterns and more — just one of the benefits of summer homeschool not seeming like school at all!

Finally, the greatest benefit of summer homeschool is just keeping those imaginations firing all year round.  Children are natural learners and any opportunity we have as parents and teachers to foster their curiosity and inquisitiveness should not be passed up.

Give summer homeschooling a try this summer and watch your kids’ imaginativeness and inventiveness grow by leaps and bounds!

Benefits of Summer Homeschool – Part II

Do you remember when you were younger and realized on the first day of school in the fall that you had managed to forget just about everything you’d been taught the previous year?  One of the benefits of summer homeschool is that kids remain on top of their game all year round.  Not only does this mean increased retention of material, but it also means that you don’t have to spend a quarter of the year in review.  You can move straight on to the new stuff!  This is a plus for students who usually balk at re-learning.

An additional benefit to summer homeschool is that if your child does need extra help in a particular subject you have ample time to concentrate on helping him master it without stressing that he will fall behind.  This fosters confidence and a love of learning in the student and greatly reduces stress on both teacher and pupil.

An important benefit to summer homeschool is reduced cost overall.  If you don’t have to spend time reviewing in the fall, then you don’t need all those review textbooks, workbooks and worksheets.  You can just concentrate on new material!

Benefits of Summer Homeschool – Part I

You can hear it now…”Awww mom, do we have to?”  Even though the kids may be resistant at first, the whole family will discover that there are many benefits to summer homeschool.  First of all, year-round school is not just for homeschoolers.  Many public school systems are seeing the value of continuous schooling and implementing courses of study the extend through the summer.  One benefit of  homeschool in the summer is less pressure on teacher and students to complete curricula that may need more practice and the ability to schedule more breaks (read: vacations!) throughout the year.

Another great benefit to summer homeschool is that days are structured.  How many times have you been presented with a child in the throes of summer doldrums who has “nothing to do”.  This doesn’t happen when you have an active school plan for the summer months, but since it is summer you can be casual enough to suspend lessons for a day at the pool with friends when the mood strikes.

Planning lessons with a summery spin or incorporating plenty of fun breaks into the plan helps to ease kids into the idea of schooling year round and gives them a chance to have fun as well. Giving summer lessons a try this year will allow you to experience the many benefits of summer homeschool and add a new dimension to your lesson planning.

Summer Learning Field Trips

One of the pluses of home education is the ability to plan and take many educational field trips. Field trips are great tools for learning since all children are visual learners and there is nothing like a field trip to combine visual learning with tactile and aural experiences to totally involve your children in the learning experience.

Summer learning field trips are a great way to get together with other homeschoolers to have fun and still incorporate learning.  A simple trip to the zoo can be incorporated into a lesson on biology, genetics, and scientific study.

Another great idea for summer learning field trips is to visit a location consistent with a historical event you may be studying.  There are lots of war museums, medical museums and other historic venues that can easily fit into a course of study.

One of my favorite destinations for summer learning field trips is the art museum.  Casual summer learning lends itself well to the study of art and a trip to an museum followed by an afternoon in the park drawing or sketching makes for a fun afternoon.

If you find museums too stuffy for your summer learning field trip, consider an art festival, Renaissance fair or cultural festival to add to your itinerary.

Why Homeschoolers Should Break for Summer

Previous posts have concentrated on the benefits of continuing to school throughout the summer.  It wouldn’t be fair not to present the other side of the coin for consideration.

There are wonderful reasons why homeschoolers should break for summer.  First of all, most of us have grown up having summers off and we all have managed to become responsible, educated adults.  There is no reason why a child that takes the summer off from schooling will be at a disadvantage in the fall.

Best of all, when homeschoolers take a break for summer they are able to catch up on some of the activities they may have been missing during the year.  Simple ones, like getting to stay up late or sleeping in might mean a lot to your student.

Many think homeschoolers should break for the summer because they don’t want to miss out on “summer vacation”, that idyllic time of year we all looked forward to as children and consider a very memorable part of our childhood.

One practical reason why homeschoolers should break for summer is that summer schooling makes you out of sync with friends and neighbors who attend traditional schools.  It can be quite difficult to teach with the doorbell ringing every few minutes or kids begging to go out and play!