Let’s talk about the last day of homeschool before “summer vacation”! First, you should know that I consider us to be year-round homeschoolers. We take plenty of breaks throughout the school year, but we do take one solid month off every year in May.
In South Carolina, we homeschool under Option 3, meaning that we have to join a homeschool association (We are SUPERFANS of our association, Carolina Homeschoolers). Each association makes its own rules, but ours allows us to start “counting days” in June. SC Law requires that we must document 180 days of learning per year, and I always like to begin in June so that we have plenty of “extra time” as things come up during the school year.
So, at the end of April, once we’ve completed our unit study and wrapped up where we want for reading and math, we have a fun day to celebrate our learning and hard work! Below, I’m sharing some photos of last year’s celebration, since I haven’t had time to edit and upload our photos from this year yet, but it was very similar.
Picture Time!
To begin the celebration, I have the kids choose a favorite outfit. I always take their “school pictures” in December in the outfit I choose, so I want them to show off their sweet personalities for these photos! Last year, we had a kindergarten graduate, so he wore the robe we picked out for our kids to share for their K5 photos. I got the idea for these photos from Alisha at LittleWomenFarmhouse on Instagram. Each year, she takes photos of her girls with the books they read that year during school. I thought this was such a beautiful tradition I decided to make it our own.
I took pictures of the kids next to the big stack of books that we used for unit studies this year, and also had them choose the book from their favorite unit of the year to pose with.
Lunch
While we cleaned up from the photo shoot, dad ran to Chick-Fil-A for our celebratory lunch, which we ate on some fun graduation themed plates. We also had mini cupcakes!
We gave the kids a small gift (last year was a new set of rain boots, this year was bathing suits) as a recognition of all their hard work. They also got a new pool to share!
Play
Then, we opened our summer season by filling up our new pool and enjoying the afternoon playing in the water.
Even though we are taking the whole month off, I try to plan one fun outdoor and one indoor activity for each day of May. If you missed our homeschool summer schedule last week, check it out here!
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