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4 day school week vs a 5 day school week
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Hi ladies! How many of you homeschool 4 days a week as opposed to 5 days? I have 6 children ages 8 and under! I mention this to say, I have a lot of little ones! I am doing school with my 3 oldest kiddos and the 3 youngest children (ages 4, 3 and 1) do a pretty good job of entertaining themselves and one of my daughters is particularly good with them and very responsible! They also come and go as we are doing school! We do all school in the morning except for Math (due to using manipulatives that can be small at times). With all of that said, I struggle with not being very available to them 5 straight mornings and I am thinking a 4 day week would be better for us as a family, especially the little ones! I have considered doing most school in the afternoon but I don’t think that would be the best time for my older kids. I would love to hear from those of you that do this! I realize the school year is longer but the weeks are shorter. I guess more of the year round school. It also wouldn’t hurt to catch up laundry on the extra day off since I have plenty of that:).
We typically do 4 days a week, year round, breaking for 2 weeks over Christmas, and then 1 week in June (for putting the garden in), 1 week in July (vacation/camp )and 1 week in September (canning/preserving etc) . Typically we take Friday off as that is swimming lessons day, but if there’s an appointment in the week, then we’ll take that day off and work Friday instead. We consider September our “start date”.
That said, this will likely be the last year we do this, because DH is a teacher. The last two summers he’s had training courses for most of the summer, but this year is his last year for that, so next year he’ll have all summer off – so we a) are planning a long extended vacation and b) we want to be off when he is to enjoy it. So starting this September it’ll be 5 days a week to coincide with a typical school year.
We’ve been doing a 4 day week this year. DH has Fridays off and I like not feeling guilty about taking that time off. However, we’ve since gotten a bit behind due to illness, visiting family, a vacation, and holidays. Recently I went through the calendar to see about how many days of school I could fit in before next fall. Then I figured out how many lessons we need to finish up our current materials. I’ve decided to have a short school day on Friday, maybe doing 1-3 subjects, and my oldest will at least complete a couple math pages on Saturdays. I’m hoping to get her ready for Algebra 1 next year when she’ll start high school. We should complete our materials before next fall, and still have time for a vacation this summer.
I hope to keep our Friday’s somewhat school-free as this fits our family best. It’s also made me feel less guilty for taking time off. Generally we spend this extra day catching up on chores & laundry in the mornings and getting out of the house in the afternoons.
We do 4 days with a full summer vacation. Fridays we do a few fun things, like a drawing lesson and the Birgess bird study, but occasionally they gets skipped. We did have a fuller schedule on Friday, all “electives”, but that made me feel stressed and overwhelmed so I moved some things around and dropped some things and am happy now with having just a little bit of structure on Fridays.
Fun to meet another mom with lots of littles! I have 9 children and 6 of mine are age 8 and under as well, while the other 3 are age 10, 11, and 14. We have done both schedules (5 day and 4 day). Now we do something in between! LOL. I’ll explain.
I prefer 5 day weeks generally because I love routine. However our life generally doesn’t lend itself to that. The biggest reason is that our 7th child has many serious medical needs and so it is not unusual to have a day off each week for appointments for him. (Average weeks have 1-5 medical appointments for him, surgeries come and go, and on really full weeks we have 20 or more medical appointments.)
So what we do is aim for 5 days a week whenever there are no morning medical appointments. Afternoon appointments don’t impact our schoolwork. Then when weeks come where we need to take a day and do multiple appointments beginning in the morning we have a 4 day week. Or occasionally a 3 day week. To make this work we have homeschooled year round for a long time. When we gain several months worth of 3-5 day school weeks that are outside the ‘traditional’ school year it makes it easy for us to get in the work we need to in a year.
I should probably add that my high schooler does work sometimes on days when the rest of the family is off – by her own choice. Sometimes she takes the day off and other times she does a subject or two on off days. She gets more flexibility to direct her schedule because she has more work to do.
Thanks for the great feedback ladies! I guess I’ll have to give it some thought!!! This year we are doing 5 days a week, but Fridays are usually lighter in the amount of work we try to do! I may wind up having one or two Fridays a month that we keep it light and the other Fridays where we take off! Hmmmmm….. lots to think about! We do love having a break in the summer, but last Summer, after 6 or 7 weeks, we felt refreshed and ready to begin again! By Friday, most weeks I just want to get caught up on cleaning and laundry and spend time with my “littles” and be more available! Also, having a day here and there to go out would be nice! As I am sure you mommas know…getting out the door with lots of kids of whom many are little is quite the task! Plus I have a daughter (my 2nd child) who was diagnosed with Autism when she was 4 (she is 6 now) and she is on a special diet, which pretty much means we cook almost everything from scratch, which is time consuming!!! So… I need margin in my life and I feel like taking at least a good many Fridays off would give me that!!! Plus, I remain open to having more children and margin is always a good thing if we have another baby! Y’all are awesome! Can you tell I’m from Alabama? lol Thanks for sharing what works for you and why! It is so great to hear from other families and what they are doing! It helps so much as I mull everything over 🙂
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