Schooling with the Seasons

Schedule, rhythm, what ever you call it, we all have one.

Ours has changed year to year, season to season, because our life keeps changing, our circumstances keep changing, so we keep changing the way our life works to match whats happening in our life.

First of all, we school with the seasons.

We don't follow the public school calendar. We don't take off the same holidays or teacher prep days, we don't finish or start on the days they do.

We school year round, and the seasons are our guide to how our days look. This just made sense since homeschool is a way of life. We never really stop learning and our days go more smoothly when we have a routine so this just works for us.

I really hated the idea of having kids just sit at home all summer doing nothing or taking off a certain day because everyone else was. I love the freedom of schooling when we want and especially taking off when we want. For example, we usually take Fridays off, and we are usually done with school before lunch!

(I'll talk more about our daily and weekly rhythms in another post)

Summer is very simple and easy on the academics. We basically do the 3 r's and throw in the occasional art project. We read a few good books and usually listen to quite a few audio books (road trips). Dan and the kids still do Science Saturday, we still have chores and read scriptures daily but other than that our focus is to do as many fun things as we can squeeze in. We have NO schedule, we stay up late,  and eat too much sugar, but it's balanced well with all of the fresh produce from our late summer harvest from the garden. And we always end our summer by harvesting the garden goods and preserve them for the rest of the year. So the last few weeks of summer school look more like farm school.

Fall we hit the ball running. I learned that slow and steady wins the race. No one wants to sit down to study every subject the first day. We slowly start adding more and more to our days until we hit a sweet spot and feel balanced with our load.
As a new year of school begins (even though we still did school the week before). We make it a big deal. We have a back to school feast where I introduce the new theme for the year. (last years theme was "By small and simple things, Great things come to pass". We take a photo, write about the things we love, favorite book/movie from the previous year of school, what we want to be when we grow up, and then set some personal goals for the year.
We spend as much time outside as we can, soaking up the sun in the crisp fall air. Spring and Fall are our favorites for hiking and visiting our favorite parks. The weather is more mild and the fresh air and sunshine are vital ingredients to a good day of school.

Winter is a hard season for me. It's cold and snowy here in Utah and all I want to do is hibernate. I can go weeks without leaving the house or even getting dressed for the day. No co-op, no grocery shopping, I just want to take cover. I really have to push myself to leave the home and stay involved in outside activities. We take this cold, dark season to read more and take on our fullest load of academics.
We take off the days we need to for holidays and make sure we check off our bucket list, but we really just take it slow during this time of year. Lots of hot chocolate, lots of bubble baths.

Spring is a breath of fresh air after the cold dark winter. The sun comes out, the flowers start to bloom, we spend as much time outside as humanly possible. We do as much of our work outside as we can. We lighten our load of academics and focus on the things that the kids are really passionate about. We start hiking and having picnics again. We have put our leather picnic mat through SO much! Its still going strong!