We’ve been homeschooling for 13 years. Around our 11th year we decided to break out of the year around schooling mode for one summer. It was an interesting experiment for sure! Here’s how it happened.

We’ve been homeschooling for 11 years. For the last 7 of those years we’ve been schooling year around. Something monumentally earth shaking has happened to us. For the first time in 7 years we are celebrating Summer Break.

Yes, that’s correct – a REAL Summer Break!

This is the result of what happens when you’ve been year around schooling, taking a week off about every 7 weeks, but nothing longer than 2 weeks at a time. And no pre-scheduled time off, except around Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong. We all loved our time schooling year around. It worked amazingly well for 7 years. Then, this year something changed and the excitement of starting back up at the end of May sounded about as appealing as a flat tire.

So, breaking out of our mold, I had each of the children prepare their very first “Summer Bucket List”.

For those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s a list of aspirations and inspirations to conquer during break time.

After explaining to my kids that this isn’t a creative writing assignment, it’s an “I WANT” free-for-all that is a totally sanctioned and approved mind storming blitz, the graphite flew!

Questions abounded…
“What if we want to stay up late?”
“What if want to get up late?”
“What if I want to swim everyday?”
“What if I want to eat popsicles everyday?”
“What if…”
“What if…”

When the lists were finished, all suggestions were read aloud and the majority of them ‘okayed’. We had a few, like “Go skiing in South American” that needed to be tossed out… at least for this summer!

So far, this mental break has renewed our homeschool muscle. We are looking forward to those brand new books and projects AFTER our days of abundant swimming, hammock lounging, out of town visiting, lemonade drinking, and popsicle eating are completed!

Time to set those books aside, celebrate, and make some memories together!

Check out a wide variety of summer fun at Rainbow Resource Center!