Homeschool Freedom - School's out!

Friday evening we got the news that a member of the extended family had passed away (my brother-in-law's mother). Less than 48 hours later my sister, her husband, and their 4 children were arriving on U.S. soil from their overseas military base to stay for 2 weeks. It has been a year since we've seen them. I quickly realized that we were officially done with school. While I had 2 weeks on the calendar yet to go, we had more than passed the 900 hours required in Ohio (we don't have a number of days required, just a number of hours). School's out!

I'm thankful for the freedom and flexibility homeschooling gives our family. We choose our schedule and fit it around our real life. My children have learned that when they work consistently in the small everyday things it accomplishes large amounts. They see that sometimes they are doing school when the local public school friends are not, but that it works in reverse too, sometimes they are off when others are still working. It has been a glorious year of learning together!

Now we're on summer vacation and planning to soak in as much family time in these 2 weeks as we can. I'll spend some time pulling the kids portfolios together in the next few weeks. I'll update Makayla's transcripts.

Some things don't totally go away during the summer. After the first two weeks of total break my kids will still be reading books. They will also have some math review and math games a couple times a week to keep skills sharp. I'll have them journal or write twice a week - anything! It could be a blog post, a letter to a friend, an impassioned plea for yet another reptile pet, or even a complaint list.

We also do chore training boot camp each June. My kids get a new chore room and keep it for a year. We'll decide who is moving to which chore and train replacements. It has been one of the best things we ever chose to do with chores!

That's the plan, now I'm off to visit with family!