A Peek Inside Our Homeschool on Snow Days
To School or Not to School on Snow Days… that is the question!
With snow and ice blanketing a good portion of the North, the homeschooling community is a-buzz with questions about schooling on snow days. Does your homeschool close when the public schools close? Do you school business-as-usual on snow days? Do you school for a part of the day and play for a part? Not surprisingly, the answers to these questions are as varied as the homeschools they represent.
I’ve posted some of the boys’ feelings regarding schooling on snow days and our parental response in the past, and largely our stance on homeschool snow days remains the same today. Public schools are closed for inclement weather because it would be unsafe for the children to travel to school. Our homeschool has yet to experience inclement weather that would impede our boys from walking down the stairs to our classroom, and so, we do school on snow days.
Now, before you decide we must be the meanest, cruelest parents in the world, we do make sure that the boys have plenty of time to play in the snow. They sleigh ride down the neighborhood slope, engage in snowball fights, and build snow forts, but they also do mathematics, reading, and a bit of grammar here and there throughout the day.
On snow days, our schedule is certainly a bit more flexible than a normal homeschool day, but it is not a day off. We save the days off for field trips, visits to Grandma, and Grandpa’s and special events that come up during the school day throughout the year. After all, that sort of flexibility is one of the things we love most about homeschooling, and it would be a shame to have to forgo one of these special opportunities because we had to make up a snow day!
What does your homeschool do on public school snow days?