Wondering About Year-Round Homeschooling

[tnahid]

I am leaning toward doing a year-round type of homeschooling. For example, I am thinking of maybe 3 weeks of lessons with 1 week of break, year-round. The week of break will be more of a relaxed schooling, maybe special projects or more field trips time. Do any of you do this type of approach? If you do year-round approach, how do you schedule it? What type of breaks do you take, etc? I just think my children could benefit from the continual type of structure with frequent breaks in between for more creative, yet still structured time. I believe I would like that approach better as well. Maybe we could do 2 weeks on during the summer and 2 weeks off or something, a little longer break then? Any thoughts or ideas on this?

Thank you for any insights.

[KTLM6]

I've always wanted to do year-round schooling, but I always chicken out. My daughter wants to be off when her ps friends are. I'm curious about how others work year-round schooling.

[countrymom]

We love it. I take a calendar and mark all of the non-negotiable vacations - Christmas, trip to grandmas, etc. Then I see how many weeks off I have left and fill them in throughout the year. When we get to one of these "negotiable" weeks off I see if I am on schedule or not. If so, we take it off. If I am behind we just skip it. This gives me the flexibility to take a day off here and there or throw in a week off if something comes up. I find one week off at a time is all we really need and it really seems to take the stress off. We do take more time off in the summer than any other time of the year, but it is nice to have breaks at other times of the year too.

[Bramble]

I wish I could make this work for us. I just have too much trouble dragging the kids in to do school when the weather is nice!! We also garden and put food up so there are other tasks that take up our time in the summer.

[my3sons]

Why not give it a try? I know some families love it. When considering what pattern you want to use to homeschool, I think it's important to ponder...
*weather
*parent(s)'s work schedule
*free time activities
*special holidays/vacations that are annual
*friends/families' schedules that influence yours
*having enough days in a year to finish a school year's worth of work (i.e. about a guide a year)
*a feeling of continuity/routine somehow

HOD's 5 day a week guides take about 175 days to complete, and the 4 day a week guides take about 140 days to complete (since they compress 5 days' worth of work into 4 to give the 5th day off). So, if you pull out your calendar, you can take a hi-lighter and hi-light all of the days you for sure know you need to take off from school (i.e. holidays, vacations, activities, etc.). Then, you can see how many days are left and start working back from there. If you could take any time off, when would you most want to take it (considering the above list)?

I always plan at least 14 days that are flexible, for unexpected things like dc being sick, dh surprising them to take them fishing, etc. Other than that, I end up being pretty specific in my plan, but you can also be quite general. Maybe you want to have just a very general goal of having half the days of school completed the first 6 months of the year, and the other half of the days of school completed in the last 6 months of the year somehow, for example. You could have a certain number of days on, and a certain number of days off, as you'd mentioned and see how that goes. Maybe you'd have a minimum number of days to complete each month, to be sure you're moving forward enough but aren't too specific in the days. Maybe you'd look at each week and choose 3-4 days to do school and let the dc know at the start of each week which days will be school days. There are lots of ways to go about this that can work!

However you go about trying your plan, I'd have some checkpoints to reflect on how it's going. For example, if you were anticipating being done with half of the guide in 6 months, and have only completed 1/4 of the guide at the close of 6 months, it's time to plan a different way of finishing so you are able to complete the guide on time. Also, I think it's important the dc don't somehow get the impression that they are in control of choosing when they will do school and when they won't, as this often results in them choosing to play all of the time and pitching quite a fit when school is eventually required of them again. As much as dc can be aware of the plan (and the fact that you are still in charge of it), is very helpful. HTH as you think through what's best for your family!

In Christ,
Julie

[tnahid]

Wow, Julie! You are an amazing planner and brainstormer! Thank you SO much for taking time to work through things and explain things and bring up new thoughts and ideas. What a blessing you are. You have given me much to think about. I am a very "global" thinker, I guess? I am very big picture, and details really sometimes hang me up and overwhelm me. But breaking things down and thinking them through is very helpful for me, and using brainstorming really helps me to not be overwhelmed with the details of planning. Detailed planning is not my natural bent, as you can probably tell, but I DO like to have a schedule and flow much better with one.

Honestly, I am very glad that I live in a state where they are generally not overly strict about all the details of schooling. And I will be moving this summer to another state (TX) where the laws also provided lots of flexibility for parents who are homeschooling too. But, I know I need to cultivate the wisdom of planning better and thinking ahead more than I do currently. So thank you again for your helpful thoughts!

[tnahid]

@Countrymom -- Thank you for your thoughts as well! I like your approach too. Blessings!

[MomtoJGJE]

We have to do 180 days of school per year. We go year round, but basically only do 190 days of school. BUT I rarely count days that they learn things when we are 'off' I could add about 5 or 10 days for things like zoo visits or vacation learning times, etc.

What I WAS doing was about a month or two of unit studies between guides, but now I try to plan off times about every 5-8 weeks... So we started after Christmas and schooled 5 days a week until we had a week off in Feb (5 weeks of school) then we schooled straight from mid Feb until last week, and we'll take April off because the weather is awesome and we have a lot planned anyway. (6 weeks of school) After this break we will school continuously until the second week of July and take at least one week, and maybe VBS week too, so that'll be 9 weeks. Then we'll school 5 more weeks until our vacation. After that, fall is insane, so we'll have 3-4 day weeks until we break at Tgiving/Christmas.

Just was giving you an idea what our schedule looks like. FWIW our school year starts with a new attendance record July 1st. We just started this new routine after Christmas...

[amysconfections]

Thanks for starting this thread! I've been casually year-round schooling. I school during the summer because it's ridiculously hot here. Then in the fall and spring we take more days off. In the dead of winter we also do more school. But, I really need a plan. We will be starting a new guide sometime in June. We are almost done (3 weeks 1 day left!!!)! So, I will print out our yearly calendar and start figuring out our schedule. That will help tremendously to have a week off here and there. I need some housework catch-up time some weeks.

I am also planning on our break to work on chore training like Julie suggested in her wonderful blog! Thanks Julie!

[twoxcell]

We start our new school year the beginning of July, and take off about 5 weeks spread out from July-May. We also take off the month of June. Although in June the kids still read, and do some math games. We also do some field trips, and VBS in June. This school year we will end up with 42 weeks of school, and we school 5 days a week. Since the guides are only 34 weeks I just fill in with my own things for the extra weeks. My state has no requirements as far as days, or weeks of school.

[3musketeers]

The education major and teacher in me has always dreamed of keeping with a traditional "Public School Schedule". But the Lord has seemed to structure our home school differently.

Here is another example of Year Round Homeschooling for you and what we do in our home:

*Every August I take a calendar and mark one week for Thanksgiving and 2 for Christmas/New years.

*I then mark the beginning of our school year around Labor day or end of August.

*I count 6 weeks from there and schedule a fall week off, usually in October. This is a fantastic time to take a vacation or "stay"- cation, beautiful weather and no crowds.

*Then comes our week for Thanksgiving in November and our 2 weeks in December.

*Next I count 6 weeks again from our Christmas break and take a week off in February. This usually coordinates with Valentines Day. This year we had some friends over for a V-day party. This is my favorite break so that I do not burn out. With the holidays over and the cold weather, I am sooooooo ready for a break here.

*Our spring break does not coordinate with the public school at all. We have 2 weeks of Spring Break usually around Easter week. This year it coordinates with Easter, a play I am directing, and the home school book fair. But this would be another great time to go places and avoid the crowds. Or even better, really focus and celebrate Easter in a special way.

*You may have seen the 6 week pattern in my planning. If so, you may notice that, "Wow, February to April is more like 10 weeks." Well, that is because during the months of March and April our family takes quite a few long weekends to camp with scouts (Thursday or Friday through Sunday).

*May and June we continue school taking off for Memorial day and VBS. We like to do swim and golf lessons in May. Our co-op ends in April, and we can again avoid crowds and enjoy nicer weather. In summer we swim in the afternoon at our city pool after school a lot.

*July we have off a long weekend or few days for the 4th. We finish our school year in July and take off all of August.

The best thing about our schedule is that we can have school 4 days a week and go to co-op on Wednesday. We did this with Bigger and LHTH by just doing the next lesson the next day we had school. And Preparing is only scheduled 4 days a week!

The only other thing we do is instead of odds and ends days off like Columbus Day or Teacher In-service, we have "Doctor visit across town" Day and "The house is a total pit and we can't live like this one more day" Day. These are few and far between, but year round school affords maybe a few more of these.

Just another example. Hope that helps. Welcome to Texas, Tina!!!!

[amysconfections]

Wow, 3 musketeers, that was so helpful! I just finished printing my calendar. Now off to mark it up. I need to plan more week long breaks. I am burning out by just plowing through.

[tnahid]

@3musketeers --- Thank you so much!!! I think I am literally going to COPY what you have done!!!! I really like this schedule! Thank you so much for your thoughts! Well, I may not copy it fully, but very close to it, if I don't! Thanks again!