My Summer home school plans 2020

By the title of this post, you might already assume I am a monster. I mean, summer home school for your children? Really? Well, yes! I have read endless articles on the ‘cons’ of summer schooling your children and do you know what? Every single article was a load of rubbish {in my opinion}. First of all, how can maintaining that momentum to fill your child’s mind with knowledge and helping them to retain that knowledge a bad thing? The idea of some people thinking that makes my mind go all wobbly.

Also, I’m not talking about having a full-on school day in amongst the summer holidays deal here. I am simply deciding to continue my children’s education, to help them retain and continue to tighten those skills that they have learnt over their recent school term. That said, the recent school term {as we all know} has been all about remote learning. Which has been anything but easy! Also, considering how much of a shit-show it was, that has surely to be even more of a reason to partake in some summer homeschooling, right?

The summer school sessions that I am planning our for my children will be no longer than 1-2 hours per day. It is their summer after all and I still want to maintain that balance of structure and free time. 

Retaining that knowledge!

I have always been a firm believer that children can lose a lot of what they learnt during their school term, over the summer holidays. This has always been a concern of mine. Baring in mind, those worries most likely stem from my son Jacob having quite bad Maths anxiety for many years. As well as Annabelle having to play catch-up due to the late tongue-tie diagnosis when she was three years old. So I’m not about to watch them backslide into the abyss, not after helping them claw up onto the level everyone else is on! No way! 

So, helping them to retain that knowledge and to hopefully help them progress on the topics they’ve been taught & doing during our remote learning journey is so important, in my opinion. 

Helping them refine & tune their learning skills

Since we started remote learning with the kids when lock down started, I noticed quite a bit about my children and how they learned. Now, I should mention I am not a teacher. I have no teacher training and with having to home school my children, it has been a steep learning curve. I’m sure we can all relate to that!

After 14 weeks of homeschooling my children, I also believe all teachers, everywhere need capes and weekly parties held in their honour. They are true classroom heroes. However, back to my point. Since having my children remote learn from home, I’ve noticed a few things that perhaps weren’t being picked up in school. Which is understandable considering there are between 25-30 children per classroom.

It was things like, for example, Jacob not being able to learn independently. It’s almost as if he needed his clan around him to build everything for him. In other words, he was being lazy! So watching him at home and encouraging him to look for the answers he needed and to seek out solutions to his problems has been challenging, but we are finally getting somewhere. Which is amazing, but we still have a good bit to go. Especially with regards to his ability to focus and double-checking his work and grammar. 

As for Annabelle, her handwriting needs some major improvements as well as her ability to write sentences. She is going into Primary 4 this September and these two are going to be my main focus. Her mental maths is great, but we will still work on her time’s tables and her addition and subtraction. Mainly to keep her sharp on those subjects. And for her literacy, alongside her sentence work and handwriting, we will continue incorporating our adverbs, adjectives, nouns and verbs.

A few helpful websites we will be using

In our summer home school, I will be using websites such as Twinkl & Corbett Maths for worksheets. We have also sourced out daily lessons on BBC Bitesize to do as well as daily lessons over on the Oak National Academy website.

This is a website we came across just this week and it is amazing. Teachers, from around the country, over lockdown have come together and made daily lessons for children who are homeschooling. Actual teachers giving the lessons, asking questions, doing quizzes and there is practical work for them to complete too.

As a side activity, I came across these 100 Challenge ideas for home learners. They’re great as a boredom buster idea or just activities to do throughout the day. There is a great selection to choose from, for all kinds of subjects and I think Annabelle will enjoy getting involved in these. Unsure if Jacob will, but I am hoping he will partake in a few throughout the summer.

Our Summer school timetable

Over the last 3 plus months, we have lost the reins entirely on routine. So, I guess in some way this is my way of trying to rein in and regain some control on that. Meaning the children will no longer be able to sleep in mid-week. They are all over sleepers and would sleep in until 10 am, sometimes even 11 am!

Now? They’ll be up, dressed and at the table for 10 am each morning. We will smash out our timetable for that day, which will be a mix of numeracy, literacy, the world around us {and languages for Jacob}. Then, they will tick off their chores {20 mins, tops!} and after that, the rest of the day is there own.

Of course, my eldest girl, who is doing her GCSE’s won’t be left out. I am still trying to work out what is the best approach for her. Which will be something like, revising passed topics and then having a test on them. There are loads of past papers for GCSE topics available online from the CCEA website. I am also going to encourage her to look into fifth-year GCSE topics that she could also look into to give herself a head start.

I just hope over the next 6 weeks and partaking in our summer home school plan, we can help the children prepare for their new school terms. We’re also going to make sure they have the best summer we can give them. But with everything going on, that isn’t going to be easy! But all we can do is try, right? So bring it on! 

Feel free to follow Super Busy Mum on Instagram to see what we get up to during our Summer home school journey. I’ll be sharing our daily summer schooling on my stories.

With remote learning over the last 14 weeks, will you be doing a summer home school with your child{ren}?

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