Summer Break?

[Daph]

I'm full of questions, so sorry. For those of you who are going half-speed, how do you handle summer breaks? Do you find that your kids retain the information they learned the year before? I'm planning on using BIGGER at half speed, with extensions for next year, when my dd is 10. I'd prefer to do it all in one year, but with our schedules, and knowing myself, I realize this may not happen. Do you use the notebooks you made as a review?

I went over the daily pages with dd8 and she said, "The whole school day is in one book! We should use this every year." I don't know who's more excited!

[holyhart]

This is our first year doing half-speed (Bigger) and I am SOOOO glad I did. It has been perfect for my dd. I think she (ok, WE) would have been overwhelmed had we gone full speed this year, especially with all the craziness in our life this year (a move, a baby, hard recovery after baby, sick baby who has failure to thrive, a toddler...). I do plan on schooling through summer and will probably pick up pace in the fall doing the last half of Bigger full speed as a 3rd grader. I think she will do very well with that. One nice thing about where we just moved is that there are no neighbor hood kids home all day distracting my kids from school during summer (however, the fact that we saw a bobcat today is a little un-nerving). I will change the schedule of our day for the summer though. Instead of starting in the morning, the kids can go out and play in the early part of the day before it gets too hot, and do school after lunch when it's at it's hottest (and then go for a swim! ....in what my hubby calls our "red-neck" pool, it's one of those pools you can buy at Walmart for $200. Kids love it and it's still big enough for me to float and cool off, what more do I need?). I don't know if that helps or not but that is what we will be doing.