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Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

If you HE, do you have a break during the summer holidays?

16 replies

phoenixflower · 10/07/2010 10:00

Just wondered whether or not you break for summer or whether you carry on throughout?

OP posts:
streakybacon · 10/07/2010 10:20

We wind down a little but continue with the basics, a bit of Maths and Literacy every couple of days. Ds has AS/ADHD and it's very hard work getting him back into the swing of things even after just a few days off so it's easier in the long run to keep ticking over.

What do you plan to do yourself, phoenix?

stressedHEmum · 10/07/2010 10:33

We have to break for summer. The DC's friends all arrive at about 10am every day and are here for the day most days. If I try to get anything else done, I face fury from the children and a whole lot of "aren't you mean" type comments from other parents. It's just not worth it.

Anyway, I think that it's good for them to have a break and do other stuff, especially on the odd occasion that the weather is good here. I agree with Streaky, though, 2 of my boys have AS and another has reading and writing problems amongst other things and it can be very hard to get them back into anything remotely resembling "work" after even a few days.

Marjoriew · 10/07/2010 11:09

We continue on a more relaxed basis. We did try taking the whole summer off once, but it was a complete disaster.
It was difficult to get grandson back into doing anything, so we've discussed it this year and we'll continue with Explore Learn his two sessions a week, and just work on our projects/lapbooks, with a day off here and there.

ommmward · 10/07/2010 13:08

Life just carries on as normal for us. We don't do anything "formal" at all at the moment - there's really no distinction between play and work, so if my children ask to do some reading or writing or colouring or painting or to talk about something interesting or to go somewhere interesting, I'll just respond as I would in "term time". And if I think of suggesting cool things to do together, I'll suggest it just as I would any other time of year.

MrsvWoolf · 10/07/2010 14:52

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

nickschick · 10/07/2010 15:01

Well usually Id say yes but just recently its been pointed out (in a nice way) that learning never stops in our house ,a friend of mines dd has had a lot of trouble measuring area ....she was at mine whilst I was baking and I was showing her how to measure area with the cake tim etc etc -when she went home she said to her Mum,you learn all the time at nickschicks house and its in a fun way she tricks you into learning really ....and I never realised that in some families its not normal to do lots of little noting down of stories and rhymes etc .......so whilst I think weve turned off 'learning' for the summer- clearly we havent.

So as it goes now theres only ds3 HE he does have the same holidays as ds1&2 but we carry on learning as 'norm'.

SpringHeeledJack · 10/07/2010 19:29

we'll just carry on as normal- outings meeting up with friends and some days staying in and reading/writing/maths activities as the mood takes us

  • we do very little formal "work" anyway as the dds are only 6. If they were of secondary age it might be different...
lolapoppins · 10/07/2010 21:06

We keep on, but in a paired down way.

Plans for this summer are for ds to write a story everyday (he loves crative writing) to keep on top of punctuation etc, half an hour of mathswhizz and the odd page of a times table maths book here and there and a history project on the Romans which he really wants to start.

Well have a week here and there where we do nothing but sit around and play guitar and watch TV, but if we did that for six weeks, he'd forget a lot of things and it would be he'll to get back into anything in september.

Saracen · 10/07/2010 22:57

ommmward said:
"Life just carries on as normal for us. We don't do anything "formal" at all at the moment - there's really no distinction between play and work, so if my children ask to do some reading or writing or colouring or painting or to talk about something interesting or to go somewhere interesting, I'll just respond as I would in "term time". And if I think of suggesting cool things to do together, I'll suggest it just as I would any other time of year."

Same here. We do end up falling into different rhythms than during term-time, however.

Nearly all the home ed activities stop for the summer, as do most of dd's other activities. In summer, we rarely go to popular public places such as museums or bowling or swimming pools. Why bother, when we're used to going when it's less crowded and rates may be cheaper? We know we'll have the place to ourselves once school starts again, so we just wait for the autumn.

Instead, my older daughter sometimes goes to various intensive holiday workshops to do drama or football or music, so I may go a whole week without seeing much of her. We try to catch up with all of her friends who go to school: I always think the six weeks will be plenty of time for that, but it never is.

I don't know whether I prefer the school holidays or termtime. It's just different, I guess. It's nice to have a change.

MrsWobbleTheWaitress · 11/07/2010 08:38

Nope. We just carry on as normal too. But we tend to be out having picnics in the woods more often. We are totally autonomous in our house, so nothing gets done here for primarily educational reasons; only for primarily fun reasons! We don't stop doing fun things because it's summer, so, I guess, we don't stop doing HE because it's summer!

The only thing is how much more crowded the places are that we go to, which is a bit pants!

milou2 · 11/07/2010 23:38

We are autonomous so DS2 just carries on with his interests. I carry on noting down bits from our conversations so I have a record. I do this 7 days a week anyway throughout the year.

The big difference is having DS1 at home too as he is normally at school. It's more relaxing for me while he is here.

phoenixflower · 12/07/2010 13:47

Thanks for the info. I am not HE at the moment but the fees for their schooling are through the rough. My youngest starts full time education for september and I'm not sure we can afford the fees for all five of them. Esp. as DD1s are going up this year. Other alternative is to put them in state school but I think I would rather HE for a while first if we did have to go down that route.

OP posts:
phoenixflower · 12/07/2010 13:48

that was meant to say "through the roof"! sorry

OP posts:
sorky · 13/07/2010 14:38

Normally yes, but we have slacked a bit this year, and need to catch up, so NO!

They don't know this yet though Maybe we'll just do mornings.....

Tinuviel · 13/07/2010 23:25

As I'm a teacher as well as HEing, we do keep to school terms for our formal work but tend to still do bits and pieces in the holidays because we like doing them.

DS2 will be working at his Japanese because that's for a competition in September; we'll do baking etc; we are planning on watching some films in French and will probably still do some simple read alouds in French too; DD has a maths workbook she wants to do and DS1 (being almost a teenager) will probably do as little as possible!! (although he does read a lot anyway)

We are going to France too, so that will include some 'educational' stuff but that's because that's what we like doing when we go away.

DS1 and DS2 are going on a Scout camp in France too and DD and I are going 'girlyshopping' and to the zoo in London!

mustbnutsy · 16/07/2010 23:36

Our children are 9 and 11 and we're going to do one maybe two mornings a week just going back over what we've learnt during the last year just as a recap. I made a note on their worksheets if they struggled with something so thats what we'll concentrate on. I think we would all find it extremely hard to get back into the swing of things in September if we didn't do this.

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