What is neat about homeschooling is that you can go on vacation whenever your family wants to and you can still homeschool while you are there. There is no having to “make up” stuff once you get back or missing out on things while you are gone. Also if you choose to just suspend school and start back again you can do that as long as you meet whatever requirements you have to meet for your state. In Ohio, we have to have so many hours of education each year and we far surpass that so that it is never an issue when we choose to take days off to do other things.

This year we are get to take an actual vacation. My husband has had to work so many long and crazy hours where no one gets to see him and he rarely has time to eat with us or do really much of anything with us except come home to sleep for a few hours. So we decided we needed to scrape together enough money to take a vacation to get away. Some people take vacations because they want to or they can. We take them because they are a necessity. Without one every now and again we could expect to function as a family at all. Once it gets to that point you just sacrifice other stuff to make it happen. When you homeschool that means you can put aside all but a few things you need to do. For me that is making sure I meet my obligations to the TOS Homeschool Crew for whom I review homeschool products/services. Of course if an educational experience arises while on vacation then it just will happen. Since we homeschool in a relaxed manner this isn’t an issue at all.

Since I am now planning for our upcoming school year I am also thinking about our vacation plans a well as how I will make things happen for us this year. This year I already know that we are going to be doing a scrapbooking unit study and I know a few of the books I want us to read. So I am going to make sure everyone will be taking pictures on our vacation. I will also have them jot down what they did that day as well as their thoughts about what happened and how they felt. On the ride to and from where we will be going I plan on having them read one of the books that they will be on their reading list for this year. While I am not really expecting them to do a whole lot on vacation I at least want us to make use of the time we will have to do some stuff. Hopefully it will not seem like too much of a chore because the focus of a vacation should really be to relax and enjoy life in order to give yourself time to heal and rejuvenate for the rest of the year.

Filed under: Home, Homeschool by Barbara
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