Why I homeschool year around!

It sounds dumb, but I am feeling very defensive this summer.  People keep asking why I homeschool year around and they keep telling me we should all take a break so I am writing out my reasons for schooling year around mostly for myself, but also for anyone else who feels they have to defend why learning should be a daily affair all year long.  My first reason for schooling year around is that I love to travel and so do my kids and we love to travel in spring and fall so while other kids are sitting in classroom wishing they could be out in the spring sunshine we are out in the sunshine.  This past year we were able to go to Denmark to pick up my oldest son as he was finishing his mission for our church.  This was a guilt free trip since I had schooled almost all summer.  My second reason is that we live in the south!!!  Summer is our winter and my red-headed lily white kids don't like to be out in the heat, and sun, and bugs.  So instead of having them sit in the house in the air conditioning doing absolutely nothing, I do school with them at least part-time.  Another reason is that I like to shift gears in the summer.  This summer I am doing a fine arts summer with the boys.  Matthew still needs one fine arts credit for high school so I bought Christine Perrin's Art of Poetry, and Carol Reynold's Discovering Music and we are spending a good chunk of our school time doing these two programs.  BTW, I love the Art of Poetry.  Poetry is hard for me, but Christine does a great job of breaking down the elements of poetry and giving poems with examples underlined so you can start to make the connections.  Joshua is finishing his Artist pin for Webelos and doing a lot of sculpting. I never seem to get around to fine arts during the year, but summer is a perfect time to slow down and do some different kinds of things.  I also like to continue math all summer even if I shift gears and do different kinds of math and lots of review.  By doing math year around good students can test out of the first third of a math course that is review for students who have lost months of math skills over the summer.  My oldest daughter got a whole extra year of math in doing this.  On the other hand, children who are struggling get some extra time to master concepts and facts that they need a little extra time to master.  So for everyone who loves to take a break in the summer - take a break and enjoy and for those of us who hate the heat and want learning to continue let's keep at it and look forward to fall travel, cooler weather, and a summer of learning.

PS - I saw this today (6/28/2013) by Christine Field and it is really good.

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