Summer Learning: Retaining Skills and Knowledge

It's been noted that school children lose about 2 months of knowledge over the summer. As a result, school teachers spend 4 to 6 weeks re-teaching material that students forget during the summer.

Homeschooled children have an advantage over traditionally schooled children during the summer months. Here's a few reasons why:

1. Homeschooled children are accustomed to learning every day, whether it's a weekday, weekend, holiday, or vacation. Learning is simply a natural part of each day, just like eating, sleeping, playing, living.

2. Homeschooled children have a sense of responsibility where their education is concerned. When learning is a natural part of each day, it ranks right along with brushing teeth, getting dressed, giving hugs, caring for others, helping friends or family, choosing a book to read, making something new, solving problems, and other daily activities. Education isn't something that occurs only at school. Rather, it's a natural part of a homeschooled child's everyday life.

3. Homeschooled children enjoy learning, they enjoy challenging themselves, and they enjoy finding new things to learn, whether it's summer, fall, winter, or spring. With the freedom and flexibility to explore a world of knowledge, they are off and running! One idea will lead to another, and -- just like a tree that branches out into new and varied directions -- the homeschooled child follows new topics that consistently branch off into areas of new knowledge and fascinating activities.

Join us at EverythingHomeschooling.com to share ideas on Summer Learning through our Message Board, or to see dozens of Summer Activities that have been suggested.

Happy homeschooling!

Summer Homeschool

For most homeschool families, summer is a time to relax, take a vacation, or enjoy a couple "get-away weekends." This doesn't mean that learning has to be suspended for two or three months, though!

Vacations or day-trips can provide plenty of learning opportunities. It's usually easy to include geography, history, and science themes during most trips. Include math concepts, too, by figuring distances, speeds, miles per gallon, costs for attractions, lodging, meals, and the total cost for the entire vacation.

Even if you don't leave home, there's plenty of activities to keep children learning all summer long. Join your library's Summer Reading Program. Books can open doors to new worlds, new experiences, and new knowledge -- a wonderful way to gain an education!

Become involved in 4H or summer programs at the local Parks & Recreation Department. Try new hobbies. Try old hobbies! Take art classes, music classes, woodworking or weaving classes.

Visit local museums, nature centers, zoos, state parks, and other areas of interest. Then create crafts and activities based on the places you visited and the things you saw there.

Make a list of all the new things children want to learn, then learn them together. Jot down fun learning ideas on paper, cut them into strips, then place the strips into a jar. Draw a "learning idea" strip from the jar each day, then create fun ways to learn about the topic.

Use books, such as 365 Simple Science Experiments or The Everything Kids' Science Experiments Book for educational science projects. Check into the Summer Smarts Activities or the Summer Bridge Activities books, too.

Our EverythingHomeschooling.com site provides dozens of learning ideas! And new summer learning ideas are added all the time!

Happy Homeschooling!