Hibernating and Other Summer Fun | Homeschool Diaries

Sonlight is having a monthly blog linkup this year, in honor of their 25th anniversary. Find out how we decided to homeschool in the February hop and my best advice for new homeschoolers in March and in April shared a day in the life of my homeschool. Last month, I admitted complete ignorance to the whole convention scene and instead blogged about our summer reading list (so far).
Now for June's prompt:
Share your favorite summer reading and learning activities.
Ah, the lazy days of summer...

CAUTION:
Three consecutive weeks of swim lessons may induce napping.

or not as much, in our case.
One of the many perks of homeschool is that when it is center of the sun hot (which in Texas, can stretch from June well into September) we hibernate.
Now since we don't live in a cave (or under a rock) hibernating is quite pleasant and even dare I say fun in it's on way. What do we do to hibernate?

Read. Lots.

Which means our library card gets quite the workout (as can be seen in my previous post on our summer reading list). This year we dusted off Narnia and read through The Magician's Nephew. We'll probably keep going and read through the rest as well. Chris and Kylee eagerly squirreled away their summer reader sets the minute they saw the Sonlight box on our stoop. Chris is finishing up Jake Drake while Kylee is part way through The Elevator Family. I'm busy reading Unoffendable by Brant Hansen, myself and working through Angie Smith's Seamless with the ladies Bible study group I help run. I've got my eye on a reread of The Giver series by Lois Lowry later this summer for myself, but we'll see if I prioritize that or not.

The Classics

My Gameboy

During the summer we spend a fair amount of time letting the kids study the classics, which in this case means listening to Beethoven, reading Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes comics and even playing their way through the SNES Classic: Link to the Past.

He's starting to really learned a lot of gumption sticking to this one game and trying again and again. Watching his face light up over retrieving the Master Sword? He runs straight to me and has to reenact the whole thing in great detail. When Ben comes home from work he gets the same enthusiastic retelling.

I think the comic books provided a big hook for the Legend of Zelda games this year, Chris read and re-read and re-re-read these nine manga despite them being with the original unflipped artwork. So he can read in either right to left or left to right as it is indicated by the work. I think discussing the Japanese order of reading was the first time he really understood how big the difference is between languages.   

Boredom. Lots.

Necessity is the mother of invention, or so the saying goes. Therefore I let the children get bored. They can figure out what to do and often come up with the most creative ways to amuse themselves. Chris spent a fairly large amount of time the other day writing out a rules and instruction guide for his very own new board game.

Board game creation in progress.

Today he was cutting out and designing the cards and pieces. I'd say it's a win-win situation. If they figure out something they want to do they've learned to self amuse. If they say they're board, they can come help me with chores or we can curl up and read.

Movies. Some.

We're keeping up with our homeschool as we ease our way past the one third mark of Core C. With large portions of our early morning devoted to school and large amounts of swimming, our movie nights offer a welcome respite from the heat and activity. I've slipped in a few of my favorite films set in or around the middle ages, since that's what we're studying. Sword in the Stone is a classic pick, but there are many more family friendly options to pick from including Robin Hood (Disney or many other versions), Sleeping Beauty, The Black Cauldron, Merlin, Camelot and The Princess Bride. (Some of the movies in that list are PG, so parental discretion is, of course, advised. Netflix came to our rescue when I ran out of family friendly films about Vikings after the "How to Train Your Dragon" series. They currently run the VeggieTales classic Lyle the Kindly Viking as well as several different documentaries on Vikings (one about whether and when they could have reached North America.)

Stay Active

The Father Daughter Sock Hop kicked off our summer season.

It seems that we never really slowed down that much during this summer! I go for a run, the kids swim in the indoor pool or they attend Kid's Zumba while I take a BodyFlow class at the Y. The kids love to visit the local indoor trampoline park, skating rink and rock wall but we save those for once in a while to reduce expenses. We spent almost all of April under torrential thunderstorms or flood warnings, so we played a ton of time playing Just Dance! as a family. The kids play at the indoor climbing structure with the nursery workers during my Bible study. I already survived my third year volunteering at VBS, but we still have several other upcoming church camps.

Learn a Foreign Language

Both kids cajoled and wheedled about learning Spanish. We finally bit the bullet and bought a Rosetta Stone online subscription. I am playing it and so are the kids. Since it's summer we have plenty of time for me to brush up my (sadly rusty) Spanish and Chris and Kylee love that they are allowed thirty minutes of time playing on my Surface anytime they want. Since we homeschool we can let them visit and revisit subjects as they show interest, so for now it's Spanish.

School during the summer gives us ample time to run around vacationing, visiting the zoo, meeting up with friends at the park and just enjoying the weather in October and November when it is a lovely, cool high of 80.

If you need me, I'll be hibernating!

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 For more homeschoolers (and their favorite summer reading and learning activities), visit the June blog party!

To join up next month, check out the link below.