Sometimes you just need to take a break…

This post has been written for homeschoolers – but a break can be an important part of everyone’s lives!

We are officially on summer break after my daughter’s 2nd year. I schedule breaks through-out the school year, but it always seems to amaze me how long it takes us to get to one.

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Since we homeschool year-round, breaks are an important part of our lives. It allows us to take a breath, and revel in where we have been and anticipate what is to come.

It also allows us to remember why we do what we do. The constant strain can make everyone tired – not just the students. I speak from firsthand experience. Being a homeschool mom takes work, and there has been more than one time that I was the one that wanted to skip a day more than my daughter.

So, why not just take an extra day or two off and get back to it? Simple…we need to rest! And just get away from it all, even if it is just stuffing everything into a drawer for a week or two and “forgetting” about it. For the student it’s getting away from the work. Learning can be exhausting especially if it doesn’t come easy. And for the teacher, i.e. me, it’s the idea that for a period of time, I don’t have to explain something again, and again, aaand again. sigh…

Here is a quick list of things we like to do on our breaks:

• Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Nothing is scheduled and anything goes, she wants to play with her mud kitchen or hang out in the pool all day – have at it! I may join her in the pool!
• Hanging out at the river/lake
• Hiking – we have great trails near us!
• Painting – we are currently looking to paint our house (which will be fun for her for about – 15 minutes) but I am talking about pictures, wood pieces, etc. When she was little, she liked to “water paint” the house. I would give her a bucket of “paint” (water) and an old paint brush, and she would “paint” all day.
• Finding shapes in the clouds – when was the last time you did that?
• Star gazing
• Board games
• Family Lego time – we have built some big houses!
• I do try to limit tv time, but when the weather is nasty out, we hang out watching movies and sipping cocoa
• Drawing with chalk (on sidewalks/patios – I also made my daughter a chalkboard out of an old door – which I will be making into a post soon)
• Imaginary play – I get out all our garden sheets and a bunch of clothesline clips and she drapes them over her swing set and chairs to make tents, pirate ships, circuses – you name it!
• We currently have a very large pot full of leftover wood pieces from projects – it is amazing the things she can think up with those. Since they are left over pieces I don’t care if they get ruined, so it’s nothing new to find them floating in the pool or being used to make a Fairy house in the sandbox.

What is something fun that you do when you get a break?

–Dawn