Home Schooling in the Raw - Why we home school year round

Several years ago, Chris and I made the choice to home school our children year round. We decided this when Alexzander ( who is now almost 11 and in 5th grade ) was starting second grade, we noticed that we were spending far to much time at the beginning of the school year, repeating and relearning everything he forgot over the summer. It was time consuming for us and frustrating for him.

Since that year, we have been schooling on a year round schedule. We start our new year the Tuesday after Labor Day. We take two weeks off each season. Generally, our breaks go like this, two weeks off around Thanksgiving, two weeks off around Christmas, two weeks off around Easter and two weeks off around the 4th of July. We do have some assignments during their breaks, generally they have a special reading assignment that earns them prizes for completely, a fun craft or project during those weeks and any make up work they still have.

Our summer school months ( June - beginning of next school year ) are different than the rest of the school year. We have a lighter work load, focus strongly on summer reading programs ( we do two from local libraries and I even printed my own last year )  and outdoor lessons. They generally have a couple work sheets a week that keep them on track with what they have learned and prep them for the next school year.  We take lots of field trips, family get aways ( it is so easy to do educational stuff on the road ) and camping trips. They help us in our garden, we take part in local events and just take learning where ever we can.