We kind of take the same attitude as Inky. For two of my kids, they learn very little at school, or at least aren't challenged much. For my oldest, he likes to really process things, so the summer allows him to review at his own pace until he feels like he truly gets it.
Mostly we just do fun things. We swim most days in our backyard pool, the kids get tons of unstructured playtime both indoors and outdoors, we travel. They also do different activities that they have picked out, all of which are just fun for them. Some of the things one or more of them do are soccer, tennis, horseback riding, gymnastics, the summer library programs, scout camps, a three-day theater camp for one, camp invention for another. If they didn't ask to do them we wouldn''t sign them up. And most activities are just for short bursts of time. Almost all of their daytime hours are free time.
Still, I feel like summer is a great time for us to kind of "homeschool." DS11 really likes the Civil War so he's gone to the library and on the internet to learn all he can about a battle he's interested in, is going to type up a short paper on it and edit it as best he can (typing and writing are definitely not strenghts and since he gets a laptop at school next year he really needs to speed up his typing) and then he wants to make a battle display like he saw another group of kids do at his school last month. He's also doing one worksheet page several days a week from a math workbood he picked out. DD8 has decided that she wants to work on girl scout badges over the summer, so she's doing all kinds of activies for each of the ones she's interested in. She, too, is doing a math page several days a week because she's really been underchallenged in math at school and she now has the chance to learn at her own level and pace. DS6 just wants to do learn some new math since he didn't learn anything in math at school last year (and he loves math!), so he either works in a workbook he likes or plays different card games or we just talk about different math concepts he's interested in. The other thing he's started working on is writing about what he's reading (really just 2-3 sentences). With sujbect acceleration next year that may encompass more than math due to scheduling, he's going to be required to write more and so far writing is the only thing he's appropriate in for grade-level. Nothing they're doing takes more than 30-45 minutes a day and they all seem to be enjoying it. If they stop enjoying it, we'll switch it up.
