Many of you have or are about to complete your first term. (Or, in the southern hemisphere, your school year!) I am often asked about what to do during school breaks. As you have heard us point out numerous times, Charlotte Mason schools took extended breaks of four weeks. This is a well needed rest for the teacher and the students, especially if you wish to prevent burn out from the effort of carrying teaching, parenting, and household responsibilities. Breaks are a rest from routine lessons, but provide necessary processing time for absorbing all that has been ingested during the previous term.
It’s interesting that I have not heard non homeschooling parents worry about the school breaks. Vacation is a time for family trips or rounds of sports or camps. Those are normal options for homeschool families also. My own memories of school breaks were of getting to sleep in, hanging out with friends, and being able to read to my heart’s content. Again, those are perfectly reasonable options for homeschool kids also.
The concern I most hear is that the children will fall apart if not in a regular routine. That is a possibility, I suppose, for kids or moms. I know most moms want to use the freed up time for getting projects done, having time to connect with friends socially, or for getting ahead on preparation for the next term.
I usually respond to this concern by reminding that all those afternoon occupations now have time to expand to all day occupations. The plays and projects and pursuits that filled afternoons can now fill mornings as well as afternoons. There is now all the time they dream of for reading, instrument practice, building forts, writing novels, and wholehearted creative projects and crafts they complain they “never have enough time for.” School breaks are not a time for hours of TV watching or video gaming.
If you want a more deliberate approach to school break activities, here are a few more specific suggestions.
1. Service to your community. Have you always wanted to involve your children in volunteering at local programs? Investigate some possibilities, make calls, and plan to participate in something for at least one day out of the long break. Test the waters by choosing different kinds of services each break. Some of these days may become captain ideas for your child’s future. This effort is especially important for children who only see the inside of their own four walls. There is a needy and hurting world out there and even young children can begin to notice. As nature study or object lessons mean stopping to pay attention in order to arouse curiosity and interest, so can your small efforts to expose your children to meeting the needs of others outside our normal circles. I also am pretty sure that if you offer to help in any special need at your church, you will find there are lots of possible ways to serve there.
2. Spend the extra hours making Christmas gifts for others. Brainstorm together. If you are not crafty folks, bake and freeze special cookies or breads. If you are not bakers, make gift cards for grandparents or others for future help they may need around their house or even dates to take them out for coffee or dinner out date, concert, or sports event.
3. Involve your children in deep cleaning bedrooms, play rooms, garage or other dreaded jobs. Make an all-out effort to put things to rights that has a reward of movie and pizza night or other appealing special treat or adventure. Work together instead of sending them off to muddle through on their own. Have fun doing the necessary unappealing big task with them. Working as a family, when I look back on it, is the number one thing that bonded our family together.
4. Make a list now of things you need to change to smooth out or lessen the stress of the next term. What was most difficult, annoying, or troublesome in your school days? Make some plans to change one or two of the most bothersome aspects. Was it getting meals together? Have your children help you make extras to freeze and pull out next term, whether that is full meals or just stacks of homemade breads, granola, cookies, muffins, etc. I have rarely been disappointed by managing to do anything ahead of time!
5. Do you wish your children to be more helpful and responsible around the house? Pick an age appropriate task they each need to learn and use the four weeks to teach and superintend honing that skill. Six-year-olds can clean bathrooms, fold clothes, make breakfast or lunch. Even if each child only learns how to make one meal, let them perfect doing so during break and require them to independently make and serve the family at least one meal per week. Do they need to learn to mow the lawn, weed the garden, paint a wall, clean out the refrigerator, bathe the dog, vacuum, wash the car, make spaghetti? Tackle one thing for each child at every break and then have them continue doing that task thereafter.
6. Hospitality. Are their friends or families you always wish to spend time with? Set a date and do all you feel you need to do to have others you never have time for come to your home. Hospitality does not need to be fancy. It’s making time for people and inviting them to come. So, enjoy the break from school to get around to those good intentions.
7. Field trips, hikes, play dates. Are you always wishing you could take a day trip to a nearby historical site? What about getting to the parks in your own town you have never visited, or wish you could visit more often? Are you guilty over lost days in nature for picnics, exploring, or discovering? Well, here are four weeks in which you can have time for outdoor adventures. As a homeschool family on a shoestring budget, these were some of the inexpensive special days my children still remember.
Perfect conditions, C. S. Lewis reminds us, never come. Having time off school is the best chance you have for taking the time to train good habits and do the things you regret not having done last year. I have given you a few ideas, but will doubtless think of more in the coming week. You will too. My last suggestion for now is that you not do all the things on the above list at the next break. You know which things need the most attention in your own family. Be realistic and aim for one or two attainable things and implement them. It is always better to accomplish something rather than to aim for everything and feel like a failure. None of us can do everything. Each of us can do something. In a year of school breaks, most of the things I suggest here could happen, just not all necessarily in the same break or you will be exhausted when the term begins!
Miss Mason’s wisdom in giving breaks was as valuable as her school day wisdom. Breaks do not mean doing nothing. Instead, consider her advice: “A change is as good as a break.” You will all return to lessons with renewed energy and closer relationships as a result.