Focus on personal growth. Summer is a great time to work on your health, study homeschool methods (our Peaceful Path course can help with this!), and get after underlying issues. If you find yourself easily angered, maybe you need better nutrition, or better boundaries. If you find yourself super emotional, maybe your hormones are off or you need to talk to a counselor. Getting yourself mentally and physically healthy will create a more peaceful homeschool environment and summer is a perfect time to work on that.
Develop good habits. In the Peaceful Loop we've been working through the book, Habits of the Household and so far we have covered morning routines, meal prep and planning, exercise, evening devotions and more. Developing these good habits as a community is setting us up for success in our homeschool and summer provides an open opportunity to work on habits of obedience, listening, personal responsibility and more.
Set up your environment-Clean out the book shelf and add in the new titles (we've got free booklists for each of our resources), file finished schoolwork, and make your environment as life giving as possible while you aren't heavily involved in school year projects.
Continue morning time-Morning time is a great opportunity to work on character issues, connect with your children, and cover missed material over the summer. It's a great idea to continue this connection time throughout the summer so you don't have to rebuild the habit from scratch. Each Peaceful Press resource includes morning time reading suggestions, but for summer you could just focus on a fun chapter book such as Charlotte's Web, a daily poetry reading, or daily scripture.
Get to know your children-Summer is also a great time to connect with your children. You can ask them about their interests and goals, develop vision boards together, and let them try a new hobby or skill (my son is doing a coding bootcamp here this summer, and my daughter is lining up some musical performances). The freedom from the school year expectations can give you a chance to really understand what your children need, and what makes them tick.
Plan the following year-Once you've taken some time to get to know your children, and refine your family vision, you can start planning the fall curriculum. Getting your orders in now mean no last minute printing rush, which will give you more time to just enjoy your family over the summer.
Are you ready to get started with a more life giving education? Check out the free samples here, and look for our newest edition, The Playful Pioneers Volume 2 later this month. I'll link the sample and booklist so you can take a look at this wonderful 30 week guide to American History. It's a perfect follow up to Playful Pioneers Volume 1 or Kind Kingdom.
