This year, we’re rounding up some of our favorite bloggers to get their thoughts on faith and family. We asked them:

How do you help your kids finish strong with school when spring fever hits?

 

Jessica of Gather and Grow

This is our first official school year as my oldest completes Kindergarten. I see the end of the year as a time to grab your second wind and race as hard as you can to finish as strong as you can. The learning process was new to us this year and we’re so proud of how well our daughter did in school. But there are things left to master…things I want her to have confidence in before she enters First Grade. With extra focus and intentional cheerleading from me and her dad, we hope to encourage her to keep going until she finishes the race.

 

Stef of Educating Laytons

We switch it up and get outside! I think play, fresh air, and sunshine are such great influences on attitudes. We do our schoolwork outside, but we also start outside projects. Gardening, bug collecting, flower dissecting, and such are great ways to get outside, learn outside, and enjoy each other!

 

Laura of Raising Soldiers 4 Christ

We take school outside. This seems to really help with spring fever. There are so many ways to incorporate outdoor learning into your regular studies and this seems to keep kids pressing on.

 

Leah of As We Walk Along the Road

We homeschool and I keep the kids posted on how many weeks of school we have left so they can stay focused on school work.

 

Cara of Cheap Ways To…

I met with my first grader’s teacher and we devised a plan to help her stay motivated. Madilyn has an “effort card” now for which the teacher awards stickers when she notices my daughter going the extra mile with her work. When she fills a card with 10 stickers, she gets free “creative play” time after she completes an assignment. This really motivates her.

 

Wendy of Hip Homeschool Moms

We try to “save up” vacation days throughout the year so we can miss more days toward the end of the year. During all those nasty cold winter days when we don’t want to be outside anyway, we try to get a lot of schoolwork done. Then, when it’s a particularly nice spring day, we skip school and go outside! If we just can’t skip school that day, we take our schoolwork outside and enjoy being in the sunshine even while we’re working.

 

Danika of Thinking Kids

We live in the Pacific Northwest, and when the sunshine appears, it’s a cause for celebration. Because we homeschool, we make time to get outside for sanity breaks. During a regular school day, we take two thirty-minute breaks outside — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Taking them at the same time every day helps us make it through our work. One afternoon a week, we move school outside. Sometimes this means we go hiking with our art journals and we paint cherry blossoms or work on botany diagrams. We’ll read our historical fiction on the trampoline. Once in a while, we’ll call our friends, meet up at the park, and play a game of baseball in the grass. Our schooling survives spring fever because we embrace it by scheduling time to be out learning and playing in God’s great creation.

 

Heather of Learning As We Grow…Growing As We Learn

We memorize verses like Phillipians 4:13, and remind them that they have worked hard and it is important to finish what they have started. A half finished castle isn’t much to look at…or other examples of things that they can imagine or visualize.

 

Lisa of Chaos Appreciation

Since we homeschool, I plan for Spring Fever days. We spend several of the snow days in winter doing our studies so we can have “Sun Days” off instead.

 

Carlie of Managing Your Blessings

For us, as homeschoolers, we usually start school much earlier during the spring season. Our children are naturally early risers and we often start school by 6am and finish by lunchtime. And then there are days that we just go outside!

 

Heidi of Our Out-of-Sync Life

One of the things we do in order to finish the school year strong is to continue our winter “schedule” until school it out. This means bedtimes remain the same, even if the sky is still full of light. Homework and studies continue to be a priority. In our family, the kids take their cues from their parents. If we remain strong, they will remain strong.