3 Ideas For a Homeschool Break

Taking a homeschool break doesn’t mean that your kids are not learning!

When you decide to take a homeschool break it doesn’t mean that your children aren’t learning. It simply means that they are learning skills and retaining information for real-world application. Whether you celebrate American, Jewish, or other holidays you can incorporate valuable lessons in the process.

Taking a homeschool break is necessary to embrace your homeschooling journey. Formal schooling is only one way to equip your child for success in adulthood.

Teach your children to serve people!

There’s so much going on in the world that children don’t understand. The way we communicate with each other is changing daily. Our interactions have changed dramatically over the past year. As adults, social media is where our primary relationships are built because of the restrictions. However, there are still ways to serve people in our community.

Children love learning about their environment and the foods they eat.
Ask your child to help your garden and offer food to a family in need.
Take your child to the store with a budget. Set the goal to buy one outfit and a toy for the local toy drive.
Sponsor a family that is in need.

Make a blessing bag for the homeless.

Find a person in your community or church that is sick or pregnant and offer to clean their house.
OR write a thank you card to the church custodian.
I have many reasons for homeschooling my kids, but one of the best reasons is to teach my children to be world-changing people who make a difference in the lives of others around them.

Homeschool education used to mean that a child demonstrated these hallmark skills:

Insight
Wisdom
Justice
Resourcefulness
Courage
AND originality.
When my husband and I discuss the aspects of quality education we agree that these skills are far more indicative of quality education rather than meeting public school criteria.

Whether you break for American holidays, choose to celebrate various cultural holidays, or neither but need to incorporate breaks into your yearly schedule these strategies can help!

Take this time to teach your children how to manage money, teach them about meal preparation, and expand on their math skills.

Let your child pay for items when you go to the store.
Money management is not a core subject in public education. It is typically habits we learn from family.

Offer your children a budget of $20 and set a goal for your outing.

Work with your child to keep track of the money they spend on a calculator or have them write it on paper to reiterate the process of managing their money. This same process will work for children as young as 6.

Have your child help you keep track of your spending when you go to the grocery store.

Ask them about the nutritional quality of food to incorporate an interdisciplinary (involving the combination of 2 or more academic disciplines into one activity) approach.

Baking is a great way to develop math skills and offers your child creative and artistic opportunities.

Have a recipe readily available for your child to read. We always make a double batch of banana bread. I ask my oldest to double all the ingredients (tactile example of adding fractions) as my 7-year-old is measuring and pouring. My 6-year-old is typically stirring. I know that he is a tactile learner, so I try to keep this in mind when doing these activities.

Use this time to encourage strong family and sibling bonds.

Encourage your children to build relationships with their siblings.
Utilize this time to build camaraderie amongst your children.

Assign them a task to work on together on, like:

An activity – wrapping birthday gifts or decorating for a holiday

Traveling to or from – determining the route

Cleaning the kitchen or a designated room

OR let them choose a responsibility to collaborate on the what, when, and how factors.

During this activity, they should demonstrate working as a team to support one another.

Use these strategies whenever possible to familiarize your children with these skills.

Soon you will be doing these things naturally. Taking a break from formal schooling will be an enjoyable and thoughtless process.