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Vacation or No Vacation, That is the Question

© Joan Archer

One of the problems that we inherit when taking children out of the Public schools system is dealing with children who are used to the summer vacation. When the calendar says "June", the boys are used to being able to just play, and not have to do anything of a serious learning nature.

One of the ways we solved many of the problems with all the vacations the public school kids get to take is to break up the school year into ten week parcels. After every tenth week, our kids get a week off. This gives them the chance to regenerate, and it does the teacher a lot of good too, believe me. It also has the added benefit of making some of their public school friends a bit envious, which is always nice when you're a young person. We are still within range of the required number of hours we are supposed to be learning, and in fact, are doing more hours than the public school.

Of course, Jasper always has to be involved with math and reading somehow, due to his dyslexia. If we take summers off, he gets behind and has more struggles trying to catch up than he would have just staying on program, so we keep him involved. Isaac, on the other hand, can be trusted to get involved in his own experiments and learning, (ever the curious person) so that I have no problem giving him a bit more leash than Jasper. In fact, Isaac tends to keep me on my toes during the summer, asking questions that I have to keep studying to learn the answers to.

My children at first were rather angry that they did not get to have a whole summer off, like their public school friends do, but when I pointed out that public school summers are getting shorter and shorter, and that most of the public school kids get their other month off during the school year (our teachers here in Omaha only teach eight months if you count out the odd day off here and there that they take) and that our school gets more field trips and experiments, they tend to weigh the differences more favorably.

If you choose to give your kids a summer off, there is nothing wrong with that either. I know for myself, it took me the better part of two months during last summer to write their science curriculum for this year. Summer time can be a time when the teacher can get a few more classes or books digested, in order to be a better teacher next year. Summer can be an excellent time to re-energize, focus or re-focus yourself and your children's education.

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