Summer Homeschool Projects

Unbeknownst to my children, we are starting “homeschool-lite” next week.  Officially we will start homeschool early this year (July vs our typical August/September method).  A lot of time was lost dealing with Maxwell’s medical issues and the care we devoted to my grandmothers last year.  Since I have three teens (one who graduated this year, but who will be pitching in, none the less) tricking them into homeschooling might sound both impossible and unfair.  A lot of what the girls dealt with last year was text-book.  Maxwell didn’t truly even have that opportunity as we struggled to keep his sight.  The hands on and travel things I hoped to provide were a flush with all the other demands on our lives.  This fall, Epiphany will be knee deep in college primarily using texts.  Olivia will be straddling the homeschool and college fence herself…and Maxwell will have enough text work dealing with the hard core academics.  We’ve all adapted to seeing reading and texts as “school” and quite honestly, we’re seeing it as a chore (sit still, read for a few hours, take tests and write reports…bo’ring). 

With gasoline over $4 (in my neighborhood) the likelihood of carefree and largely spontaneous “field trips” isn’t going to happen.  I have a couple of low-cost nearby things in mind…but they are on a wait and see list.  In the meantime, I’m using the summer as big time science experiments just for the fun of doing rather than studies.  I’m also ramping up the whole idea of Home Life Skills from baking, budgeting and minor repairs into huge and use-able projects that they can stand back and say “hey, that’s pretty professional!” 

I’ve been promising some homeschool stuff/forms for posting…and in prep for that I’ve Googled my little heart out looking for inspiration and ideas (and yeah, you can go ahead and say that I’ve been late in pulling through with the blog entries).  I’ve stumbled upon Tipnut.com, a wonderful resource for do-it-yourselfers and those looking for old fashioned and low key options … a huge boon for this “hardly done a project herself” homeschool mom.  (My father raised me in the archaic “girls don’t need to pick up a hammer” style.)  During the summer, our family will be picking an item (maybe two) from the 33 Backyard Projects You Can Do list…keeping my fingers crossed for the potting bench (free plans, too!).