Summer- Live it up!

I've gotten a lot of questions from readers, friends and family about how we handle summer in an Academic Homeschooling family. I can promise, our summer is just as summer-y as traditional school families, with a few twists!

Summers of my childhood are filled with memories of playing in the empty fields, making dandelion launchers, breaking my parents' garage door by trying to ride on it. My brother and I rode our bikes to the local Dairy Queen for ice cream on special occasions and generally wandered the neighborhood with all the other kids. 

Summer in my neighborhood isn't like that anymore. Most of our friends have full-time jobs and their kids are in daycare all summer, all day. Families try to take their vacations before school starts up again. I cannot remember the last time I saw a kid riding a bike down the street in my neighborhood. It's just not like that where we live.

So that leaves an interesting conundrum for our family. Summer is time to discover interests, passions, take on projects and lounge by the pool for hours. We wholeheartedly support this as a family! We indulge a few summer wishes like "I want to spend an entire day playing Minecraft without leaving the computer." We also travel, go camping with friends, take the long hot days to start a new project like building a 3,000 piece Lego shop or playing cup bowling on our long tile hallway.

The other opportunity that we use summer for is exploring independence. The kid has attended a sleep-away camp the past two summers and will tackle two camps this summer. He goes completely unplugged, off into the hands of international college students and a well-established camp philosophy to learn how to kayak, slingshot, build log forts, sing silly songs and play poker in the cabin on a rainy day. It's about life experience too- learning to trust others, be brave and resilient. This year, he will also have a video game design sleep-away camp on a college campus. It will be a completely different experience for him, to have one single goal and project to accomplish in one week. 

Summer is the perfect time for Academic Homeschoolers to take advantage of enrichment camps, day experiences and filling your child's emotional and social buckets full of adventures. The kid will have a half-day camp week at the local SPCA learning how to take care of animals and prepare them for adoption. In a completely opposite direction, he'll also have a full-day camp week in 3D printing and CAD design. He'll also have six weeks of plain boring summer. We like to mix it up around here! 

I encourage you to consider spending some of your homeschool budget on a high quality camp, whether it's day or overnight. The opportunity to explore something completely outside of your home, your realm of knowledge and your family's focus will develop a new sense of exploration and adventure in your child. Sure, as a mom it's completely panic-inducing to drop your kid off in the mountains and not hear from them for a week. But the stories, the smiles and the skills he comes home with will be worth every single near heart-attack moment. 

For camps near you try the American Camp Association, your local park and recreation or Google your major metropolitan area and "day camp".