Summer School is NOT a Dirty Word!

The farther I move from the "school mindset" that I grew up with, the more I'm amused by how completely brainwashed we are . . . school was originally in the winter because of an agricultural society where every able bodied man, woman and child was busy working on the farm in the summer.

Interestingly, if you read books set in that society, you'll find that often the youngest children DID go to school in the summer, and the older boys, only went to school in the dead of winter when farm work was at an almost complete standstill. And yet, now we all seem to think that school is only for August through June.

People act shocked to hear that we "do school" in the summertime, and occasionally let my children know that they are being mistreated to not get their summers "off".  When Sassy and MiniMe first began to hear this from people (as they hit the point of being obviously school aged, so that the questions about homeschool began), I think they bought into it a little bit.  Even though they've always loved learning, including our "school" times, I began to see that little seed of doubt sprouting in their minds. Maybe it really WASN'T fair that they "had to" do school in the summertime. . .

And then, time passed, they also heard me answering those people, and as the seasons rolled around, I became a little bit more intentional about pointing some things out to them. When we had a week of awesome sledding snow and every morning after morning devotion time I bundled them up and sent them out to play in the snow all day, I'd comment that "we can do school when there isn't awesome sledding snow, go have fun!". . . when spring's gorgeous, amazing, practically perfect weather came around we'd sit under the pine tree to read our morning Bible and then I'd leave them to play outside all day, commenting "we'll have plenty of time to do school when it's too hot to play outside, soak up this wonderful weather while you can!!!

And THEN, when it WAS super hot, sure enough, we were all more than happy to settle in our comfortably air conditioned house and do school . . . and it all started to make sense to the girls. Now, they are just as quick as I am, to let the naysayers know, summer's a great time to do school! It's too hot to do anything else, and that means we have time to enjoy the snow, or spring weather or whatever else might come along the rest of the year!

There are many reasons why we choose to school year round, but a definite advantage we've found is that, when it's 95 degrees and 100% humidity, it's a great time to settle down and read a great history book, or gather at the table to paint a picture or any other typical "school" thing that is typically done inside anyway!

School in summer is one of the ways that we beat the summer heat, but be sure to check out the blog cruise for other ideas for beating the summer heat!