Back to the schedule... or so much for the summer slide

We have now survived two full days of our school schedule. Well, 'survive' might be a bit over-dramatic as they went fairly well. 'Full days' might also be taken the wrong way as we finished everything each day in under 2 1/2 hours. Our first two mornings of school have gone well is perhaps more accurate.

One reason we have finished so quickly is that I am not assigning a huge amount of math. I like to work into it slowly, doing some review as everyone finds their math brains again after a summer off. Having now reviewed fractions with one child, borrowing with a second, and long division with a third, I think those skills are starting to resurface. Grammar we jumped into with a bang, tackling the difference between the use of 'well' as an adverb and 'good' as an adjective. I am happy to report that this was easy for most of them as they have the words in their ears correctly.

I also was able to spend individual time each morning with H. and R. Yesterday, I grabbed activity boxes that were challenging for each of them this time last year. I always kind of hold my breath when I do this because it is so exciting when I see improvement and so disheartening when I don't. I started R. off with a cutting practice box. We tried this one once and it was a dismal failure. R. couldn't cut on the simple lines nor could she stop cutting. I turned my head for a minute to help someone else only to discover she had turned the piece of paper into confetti. It didn't seem worth the battle, so I set it aside. It turns out I set it aside for an entire year as I didn't have the guts to try it again. Well, she did it! No only was she able to stay on the very simple lines, but she was able to cut pretty decently along the more complicated curving lines. But best was when she finished cutting, she handed me what she had done and waited to pick the next one. I know 'stopped cutting with scissors' seems like a pretty low bar type of achievement, but I have to tell you to me it was huge. HUGE!

I am doing more hands-on type grammar boxes with H. since there is so much about the abstract nature of grammar that just baffles H. The box I chose was a preposition box, with laminated cards each with one preposition on it, a plastic animal (it used to be a baby elephant, but someone, sometime freed the baby elephant and replaced it with a tapir), and some blocks. The idea is the child draws a card and then uses the blocks and plastic animal to show what the preposition means. For instance, H. drew the card 'into'. She then build a small house for the tapir and moved him inside of it. Did you catch that? She did it. She did nearly all of them, only getting tripped up by one or two. Last year, she needed significant help with doing any of them. She did the whole thing so well, we probably won't be getting that box out again as it served its purpose.

I noticed growth in others as well. We use timelines throughout the year regardless of what we are learning about. There are always dates and events to be added. Finding the dates and adding the information has always been something that everyone has needed a lot of support with. Yesterday, we were marking in the eras of Ancient Greek history as an introduction to our learning about it, so there was a lot of finding of dates. I had written everything out on white boards so they knew the dates and how to label them. Well, quite a few children, after I got them started, were able to do their timeline work on their own. This will make the coming school year a lot easier.

This is one reason why I love homeschooling. Since I am the primary teacher, I am extremely aware of what each of them struggles with and how much support they need. In the midst of it, it can seem as though they will never quite make progress. Then, after a break, suddenly things make sense and they do a huge leap forward. A leap I wouldn't have appreciated quite as much if I wasn't there for every single minute of the struggle.

Did you catch that one little phrase, 'after a break'? This is kind of where I am heading with all of this and the point of this post. I only ever see huge leaps in ability and understanding after a decent break. I have seen it academically with my own children. I have seen it in dozens of piano students over many years. It's a thing. Our brains need time to rest and regroup and process what has been learned before we can really make it our own and use that information. This is one reason why we do a complete academic break during the summer. (The other reason is that I need the mental break. I can't keep this up year 'round.) My children are still doing interesting things. They are still learning. They just aren't doing traditional school work. It's a good three months, sometimes longer, of not hitting the books.

So I don't buy the whole summer slide-thing. If a child learned something before summer, then it will still be there. It may take a day or two of review to have it fully accessible, but there is a very good possibility that the information will be even more useful after the break and then review. If they don't remember it, then they didn't really learn it in the first place, so there's actually no loss. It might mean that the break will allow them to approach the difficult topic in a fresh way and actually be able to comprehend it this time around.

Don't be afraid to take breaks. Don't be afraid to take your time. Sometimes the slow route gets you to your destination in far better time than the supposedly faster and more heavily used one. Plus, it's a whole lot more interesting.