How to Take a Successful Homeschool Break

• Because regular school is on break

Some homeschool families like keeping a rhythm that is similar to the traditional school model. The scheduling of breaks might be a convenience if they are trying to align with other friends or family members who do not homeschool. Here is an example of a county school schedule.

• Because it feels like it’s just what we’ve always done

It’s hard to remember a time where school was not associated with the routine of summer, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and spring break. This is most likely because of how traditional school initially got it’s rhythm, but it might be worth questioning. This article highlights such questions.

• Because if we don’t take a break, we might academically burnout

Often times making progress in learning can feel exhausting, and the thoughts of a break puts energy in our bones.

• Because life brings extraordinary circumstances like family crisis, extreme weather, moving, etc.

• A pause from the regular routine to rest the body, the brain, the emotions
• A pause does not mean that we stop learning everywhere in our life necessarily, we evaluate pressure points that could use a little wiggle room and work in small steps.

• To take a successful homeschool break, know your learning goals.

When you have your focus for all of learning simply defined, I have found that any learning experience or break from learning is easier to navigate in the context of those goals... and I am less likely to stall in learning progress when I have my goals clearly in my mind. I walk through a simple strategy for how to develop learning goals in one of my podcast episodes titled, Learning Goals: Don’t Teach Math without Them. -math-without-the

• My next tip for taking a successful homeschool break is to define your homeschool break in alignment with your goals.

Rather than looking a taking a break as a cessation of learning, I think of taking a break as another thing that I’m modeling about real life for my kids. The purpose for taking breaks, how to take a break, etc. I share a more detailed example of this in another podcast episode titled Christmas Consistency: How to Avoid Learning Regression During the Holidays.

• My last tip for how to take a successful homeschool break is to plan to ease in and out of the break with simple learning tasks.

Rather than stop cold turkey, take a break, then try to ramp up everything again, I have found that easing in and out of a break supports the overall learning rhythm in our home to where very little regression occurs. We usually ease in and out of breaks with simple tasks like flash cards, geography puzzles, read aloud, typing games, etc...simple, almost route practice of foundational skills presented in a play-based format. The Christmas Consistency episode also has some specific examples for how to play around with this to fit the season as well.

https://sites.libsyn.com/549582/christmas-consistency-merry-math-how-to-avoid-learning-regression-during-the-holidays