Our Unschooling Summer of Fun!

This school year has been one of the toughest yet, if not the toughest. I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve already toured 2 private schools and am seriously praying about my options for the fall. In the meantime, I really, REALLY needed to figure out how to survive May through August!

I am  happy to announce that we started our SUMMER BREAK early!! Woot!! {Yes, we started summer break even though we have about 20 days left needed for our 180 days. Enter unschooling summer of fun!}

The last week of April we woke up on a regular day and I told the kids we were putting away allll our curriculum and long lists of school work we’ve been working on all year. We were DONE. And that day we worked on our Summer Bucket List 2014! {Note: I did have to tell my kids we would NOT be doing all of these items, especially the ones that cost a lot of money, but it was fun to dream with them about fun things we could do as a family!}

{Homeschool Share has a FREE Summer Bucket List printable if you’d like to create one yourself!} 

In addition to our summer bucket list, I’m making it a point to look for everyday, teachable moments. Some might call it unschooling. I call it living life. In addition to trying to find the educational value of fun things we are doing, I’m trying to DOCUMENT these things. So, if you want to follow me on instagram to see our journey, I would love to have you join us! Use the hashtag #summerbucketlist14 or #everydaylearningmoments and share your own summer learning moments!

Here are some of our everyday learning moments thus far:

Did you know that a lot of theme parks have online resources and curriculum for teachers? We live near Dollywood and were blessed to receive passes for a Christmas gift. So, I started hunting around…and found educational information about our favorite roller coasters!! Here are Dollywood’s teacher resources. We will also do the bird show one day this summer, their bird show is wonderful! And all the eagles in the park are amazing!

 

Shhh! I’ve also ordered this for more roller coaster learning fun!

Dollywood also has 2 amazing glass blowers. We watched as he created a piggy bank, he explained every step of the process. SO amazing!

One item on our bucket list is homemade ice cream. 🙂 YUM. I’m sure we will make it several times, but we had it once already to celebrate the beginning of our summer! As David was making it in our ice cream maker, he explained to the kids why we needed the salt! Science with our ice cream!

Finally, there are 2 main areas of academics that I wanted us to continue spending at least a LITTLE time on each week. So, I found a solution for my least favorite subject: MATH! I asked a homeschool friend from our co-op that is starting college in the fall if she would come over 2x per week and do math with my girls. Woot. She has come twice so far and in my humble opinion, this was the MOST GENIUS idea I’ve ever had. 🙂 The girls are EXCITED for her to come. They ENJOY their time with her – yes, even doing math!

I shared on social media the other day that I was hearing things like “awesome job!” and “you did it!” which are things that definitely were NOT coming out of MY mouth during math time. I’m so thrilled with this new addition to our homeschool. Why didn’t I do something like this years ago?!

In addition to math, I told Caleb I was going to read him ONE PICTURE BOOK a day. There are so many of my favorite picture books that Caleb just missed out on. I read them with the girls 4-5 years ago and then haven’t pulled all of them back out yet. Some of these are FIAR titles, some just my favorites. 🙂

The very first day we did this, I chose Roxaboxen. I read the book to Caleb and the girls listened also. 🙂 When I got to the end, the kids excitedly told me, “Mom! We have our own roxaboxen!” I had no idea that they had been building their own little “houses” down the street with other kids that live near us. There is a small wooded area behind their friends house and they’ve been finding “treasures” in the dirt and setting up their own spaces! Y’all. I could have cried. I know, I’m strange…but that just made my day!! If I hadn’t decided to read that book to the kids, I would have missed out on knowing this wonderful little town my kids had been creating. My plan is to walk down and take a picture very soon!

Every time I ask Caleb to read to me, he always, always chooses Curious George. 🙂 I want to remember these sweet moments because just a few weeks ago I was ready to PULL MY HAIR OUT with this sweet child. 🙂

And, for more summer science fun I’ve ordered these as well:

So, there you have it. Our wonderful summer plans. I will let you in on a little secret: we’ve had such a good 2 weeks that I’m thrilled with this decision to start summer break early. I would highly recommend ditching school. LOL!

What about you? Are you planning anything FUN and EDUCATIONAL this summer?? I would love to hear about your ideas!!

Up next: I hope to share a few more of our everyday learning moments. I also just finished this book over the weekend and will be sharing about it soon!  This book has really, REALLY inspired me!!