The last few weeks of the
school year can be tough for students whose exhaustion from work and excitement
for summer are steadily mounting. Home
school is no exception to that rule, so here are some tips from Ella and me on
how to survive the end of the home school year and still obtain valuable
educational hours.
Health and Safety/ Life Skills: when table work
gets too drudging, we opt for tasks around our home. Anything from baking bread to pool
maintenance, planting vegetables to organizing closets is fair game because
some day those skills may come in handy.
Movies and Videos: with resources like YouTube
and Amazon, it’s easy to find movies that tie into the curriculum. For example,
Ella recently watched and very much enjoyed Hidden Figures which connected with
social studies (segregation, space exploration) and Ohio Studies (John Glenn).
Field Trips: strawberry picking, an afternoon at
the zoo, and a trip to the bank to open a first savings account all intertwine
with portions of the fourth grade curriculum and count toward our required 900
hours.
More PE: sunny days are back again and riding
bikes, jumping on the trampoline, and swimming are all considered physical
education in this home school.
Music and Art: we saved some lessons in these
two subjects for last because it’s really more fun to learn about Duke Ellington
and try swing dancing than it’s doing fractions. And Ella’ll take trying to draw a Gothic
building over a grammar lesson any day.
Quiet Reading /Read Aloud: reading fiction has
been a highlight all year long, so when we feel like a break, but still need to
get those hours in, we can pull out our respective novels or read together in
our shared books.
In less than 100 hours, my big girl will no longer be an
elementary schooler, but move into her middle school years. Cue the tears – time’s flying. Didn’t she just start Kindergarten?
