Year Round School Schedule

We school year round and have from the beginning and love it!  We usually have a 4 day school schedule, because my husband works a 4 day work week, and it just seems to work out that we don’t get school done on a day he’s home!  We always take a week off at Thanksgiving – but take at least one educational trip during that time.  We take the week or so between Christmas and New Years off.  We take 2 weeks off in August to visit family – but, we usually school one week while we are down there, and go on lots of education trips, and then 2 weeks off at some other point in time for a family vacation, always filled with TONS of educational trips.  So even our “time off” is not legally time off since we are learning so many things. Oh – and we ALWAYS take off for “beautiful weather days”.  The public schools get off for snow days.  We take off for the first few beautiful days of spring to enjoy the weather! We tried taking the month of December off once, to do lots of baking and crafts and such, but it really was too much time off for us.

I schedule my week by Day 1 – 5 instead of a Monday through Friday like someone else here suggested and it has worked like a charm!  When I originally started homeschooling, my husband usually worked 5 days a week, sometimes 4.  So Fridays always seemed to get skipped a lot, and therefore we seemed to fall behind on things that were scheduled for Friday – ie: Science would be scheduled for Wed and Fri.  But if we skipped school often on Fridays, we were only getting 1 day of science done.  We then switched to a Day 1 – 5 schedule.  So at the start of a term we school Mon – Thurs. and the first week we do a Day 1 – 4.  The following week on Monday, we start on Day 5, tuesday would be Day 1, Wednesday would be Day 2, Thurs. would be Day 3, and the following week we’d start on Day 4.  This way, we weren’t consistantly skipping any particular day,  and we can easily add in more school days for the weeks where my husband works 5 or 6 days during the week. 

This has made our whole schooling much more flexible.  We are able to spend the weekends doing whatever we want!  We go on errands as a family, go on educational trips to local museums or zoos (by the way – getting a family pass to a local museum is a GREAT investment if it participates in a reciprical (sp?) program.  We are members to our local science museum, and the membership allows us to go to museums all over the US for free!  Anytime we travel, we try to make it a point to visit a museum that is included in our membership, and it’s great to have the freedom to decided to spend a rainy afternoon at a local museum for the price of gas to get there!)  The kids enjoy more free time and it also helps me to be more flexible when things are just not going well.  I don’t have the overwhelming anxiety of “Oh no!  We need to get schooling done!”  Because our school year never stops!  So if we miss some because we’re feeling burnt out, or I’ve hit  a rough patch of a pregnancy or whatever, I really don’t sweat too much over it!  Hope this helps!!

Today was our last day of school for the year.

We school Jan.-Dec. & LOVE it!!

We never break for more than 3 weeks at a time. Usually it’s 2.

But, the one time we took 5-6 weeks off even my hubby said “never again”

It’s been tweaked a little over the years, but I’m REALLY excited to start 2012.

This year we’ll do light days on Monday with Nature Study,

Tuesday is Bible Study for Mum & Missions Class for the boys with Music Lessons,

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are the more “focused” academics days.

{Just realized these are some of the thoughts I was putting together for my blog post next week 😉 }

We’re in our second year of homeschooling and have switched this year to a year round schedul~~we LOVE it!  We took all of June off and began school right after the 4th of July weekend.  We do school 3 weeks on/1 week off.  I had problems with the girls’ attention spans last year following a more traditional school year schedule –we just seemed to burn out quicker…all of us….and then after those long breaks it seemed to take forever to get back into the routine where I felt like we were actually getting somewhere with our academics.  I knew I needed to break that cycle, so reading what the ladies on here do really inspired me to try this.  It works wonderfully!!  We do school, fully engaged and without hitting a burnout point for 3 weeks.  During that time, there are alWAys things that come up that we would like to do, as well as eduational things we already plan….so during our 1 week off, we make sure that those things/events are then enjoyed, and it also allows me time to prepare for the next 3 weeks.  I cannot imagine changing anytime soon, of course as the girls get older I will re-evaluate , if needed.  Our home life is more peaceful and this has brought homeschooling to more of a way of life than last year.  We schedule 2 weeks off for Christmas/New Year and 1 week off for the girls’ birthdays (their birthdays fall the same week, although they are 3 years apart 😉  ) We intend to take 1 week off for a family vacation to Disney this Spring and along with the handful of long weekends the regular calendar year provides (that Daddy gets off, so we take off that day as well), we are perfectly happy.  Good luck!!!!!!!

I was prepared to write out what we do for year round schooling but after reading the posts first, we school year round EXACTLY like Laura.bora! We have been doing this for 2 years now and we absolutely love it! We begin August 1st and finish sometime late June or early July. Our day off is Fridays and it leaves me all day that day for grocery shopping, errands, chiro appts, etc. We also get to take so many fun family trips throughout the year without getting behind. In February we’re headed to the Creation Museum in Ohio!!

We school year-round, similar to WendyB and Laura.Bora. I have a 5 day schedule printed, but might finish those 5 days into the next week if we take a few days of for whatever Life throws at us. We take off for birthdays and holidays. It is hard in the summer on nice days when everyone else is out of school and we have work to do, but it is fine on those too hot days! We don’t take anymore than 2 weeks off. I also do part-time some weeks, like MWF or TuTh. We have half days on Fridays because we usually go meet with the local hs group. We take a few field trips each year to museums and the zoo. I am more flexible that what I used to be, and that has helped.

I am planning on teaching year round as well. It seems that they “forget” things a lot quicker when we take the standard summer off. Besides, in Texas we have HOT summers and this past one with 120 degrees for almost 50 days straight prompted me to start school early. We started off around the end of July and by mid August the kids were so stir crazy from being stuck inside, I started schooling them LOL

Going year round is a bit more relaxed too. If I have a “deadline” for a textbook or something and life throws us a loop, I get stressed about being “off schedule”.

Thanks for the great ideas!!!

God bless and Merry CHRISTmas!!!