When I was developing my first homeschool resource, Seashore Science, I was looking ahead toward the summer months and remembered doing a watered down version of this curriculum years ago with my own kids as a lighter summer curriculum.
We live in Minnesota, which means winters are loooooooooong and summer months are precious. Because of this, we don't homeschool year-round in the true sense of year-round homeschooling. Instead, we do a traditional 9 months of homeschooling and then during the summer months, we continue the learning but we aren't spending a few hours doing dedicated homeschool time like we do during the other 9 months of the year.
As I was thinking about putting together my first science resource, I really wanted it to be flexible and adaptable to any family. What makes many homeschool resources hard to use is their rigidity in what days or how often they are scheduled to be used. I wanted something that had flexibility. So, I came up with the term Summer Scholé, like summer school only way more fun!
If you aren't familiar with the term Scholé, it is a common term used among many homeschoolers, particularly those who follow a Charlotte Mason approach to education. Scholé is actually the root word of the word "school" as we now know it. But, the meaning has changed a lot as education has become more formalized. Scholé is actually a Greek word meaning "leisure." When we think of formalized schooling, leisure is not a word that typically comes to mind. But for many homeschoolers, the idea of slower-paced learning, seeking truth and wisdom through books, taking our time, and carving out space to reflect and ponder are exactly the things we wanted in our children's educations.
The idea behind the Summer Scholé schedule is that families can do more lessons weekly in one of my resources for a shorter period of time but have it be their "lighter" main curriculum when they are not doing a full homeschool load. But, I also include other options as well for families who want to use the resource for a main subject during a regular homeschool year.
The Summer Scholé schedule also can work well for non-homeschooling families who are together during the summer months and want something fun to do together!
The beauty of any kind of at-home learning is you can adapt things to work for you. You do not have to do all of the components of each lesson at once (or you can even skip anything for time's sake or if your children just are not interested in a topic). You could read the main reading over breakfast, watch a short video as you are making lunch, read the picture book before bed, do the activities on the weekends, and notebook during quiet time. There is no right or wrong way to implement any of our resources.
We look forward to creating many more resources with flexible schedules to adapt to any family's specific needs!
1 comment
Love this concept soo much, so glad I found this, feels exactly like what I was looking for to try out with my kids while they have summer break.