We finished up our homeschool year with IOWA testing this week. It was a great year at Highlands Latin in Cincinnati, and I’m looking forward to next year, both the classes I’ll get to teach and the ones my kids will get to experience.

But not yet.

I’m definitely ready for a summer break. At our home, our summer schedule necessarily changes dramatically from anything we see during the school year. My wife is off work for summer break, I try to focus on writing, the kids have various camps, etc. It’s a delightful change of routine, but it also presents some challenges.

In past summers, I’ve come up with plans to keep the kids doing a minimal amount of school work during the summer months, just to keep their skills from going completely to seed. These have been largely…unsuccessful. Routine is really hard with all the various activities (to say nothing of a few family visits and a vacation thrown in) and, as is a common theme, the failure is often due to my lack of consistency and follow through.

In truth, I don’t really want to do school during the summer, and neither do they.

Yet, I’m afraid to say, I can’t always get what I want. Our kids did a lot of math facts this year and learned a lot of latin, neither of which should be completely abandoned for two and a half months. So….

Any ideas? Have you found something that’s worked well for your homeschool kiddos during the crazy summer months? Or perhaps you’d like to encourage me in my sloth and laziness (please don’t:-). Love to hear from you in the comments section!

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