Summer: 12 Weeks of Interdisciplinary K–12 Family Curriculum
A child who has just circled the globe should get to look hard at one small piece of it.
The world close up
The season that turns back around.
After three seasons abroad, Summer comes home. Your own state, your own watershed, your own street and the people on it. The same seven strands, the same weekly rhythm, but pointed at a radius a child can reach on foot or in a car on a Tuesday.
It is deliberately lighter. Shorter mornings, more outside, and more of the year spent making things rather than reading about them. Families who need a full academic load in June will find it here. Families who want the summer to breathe will find that the Menu Rule does most of the work for them.
Twelve weeks in three movements
This place
Your state, your county, your street
Local geology, watershed, weather, and the history of the ground you are standing on. Who was here first, who came next, and what the buildings on the main street are actually telling you.
These people
The working neighbours
Growers, makers, fishers, builders, librarians, and repairers. Twelve weeks of Nature and Community turned all the way outward, with a visit or an interview as the week's real work.
This project
One long build
The Imagination Studio takes the lead. A single sustained project chosen by the child, carried across four weeks, and finished. Most families end the year here, with something on the table that was not there in September.
Three seasons abroad. One season on your own street.
Summer · home ground
What Summer does to each thread
Local and state geography and history, at the scale of a walk. The map comes off the wall and onto the ground.
Twelve doorways of place, work, and belonging. Interview, letter, and field notes join the usual forms.
The summer virtue arc and the final twelve verses of the fifty-two week table, closing the year's circle.
Regional music and local artists, plus the architecture on your own main street, read the way the year taught you to read buildings.
The long build. Four weeks, one project, child-chosen, finished and shown.
Applied. The year's concepts pointed at something real and local: a garden, a map, a small tool the household actually wants.
The strand's full season. Twelve walks, twelve people, and the field trip log finally earning its place.
Everything, in one print-ready file
Welcome to Summer, Why This Curriculum Exists, The Menu Rule, How This Season Works, How Axis Approaches AI, The Three Records, Where Summer Might Take You, and Preparing for Summer.
One full section per strand: the big picture, the books and materials, and how to implement it.
The Weekly Map and the Sunday Read for each of the twelve weeks.
The Family Kaleidoscope dot map, which in Summer fills up with places within an hour of your door.
The child's one word and the parent's one sentence, week by week, closing the written history of the year.
Attendance, reading log, field trip log, and grades at a glance.
All thirty-six weeks on one sheet, so you always know where you are.
Summer runs at whatever weight your family needs. Used fully it is a complete twelve-week season. Used lightly it is a summer of walks, visits, and one good project, and the Menu Rule makes that a legitimate way to use it rather than a compromise.