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Do you school 180 day? or More?
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We school 180 day a year. I have the school days planned out as well as our days off. I have my lessons planned so that I know exactly what we are doing each day and if we miss a day, it throws our schedule off because we have to make that up so that we stick with the 180 days. I feel like our school days are so full that we don’t have time for anything else. It is school, chores, meals etc and then the day is over. I have no flexibility. If we want to go to the park, I have to work that into our schedule.
I know there are some that school more than 180 days and they just go with the flow. They pick up the next day where they left off the day before. If it takes 12 months to get thru math rather than 9 months, that is fine. But I can’t seem to wrap my type A mind around this. How do you gauge if you are on track or behind? How do you keep from getting too lazy and not getting much school done? (I am always afraid of this for myself)
How do you do school? 180 days? More? Less?I would love your input because I feel in bondage to my current schedule and I want to be more flexible, I just don’t know how.
I have decided to schedule in catch up time into my schedule. Last year I scheduled 180 days worth of readings, and we didn’t get to them all. I’m still trying to decide on 11 week curriculum then 1 week catch up or review per term, 4 days of essential academics and 1 fine arts/nature day (with the fine arts day being used as a catch up academic day when something comes up), or 5 weeks essential academics followed by 1week fine arts,games,nature study,field trips, etc….. I’m considering essential academics the basics to any curriculum like the 3r’s. Remember, in the 180 days of public school, many of those days are for field trips, parties, special programs, 1/2 days, a few days at the start of the year just for meeting the teacher and classmates and learning the routine, reviewing material from the previous year, a few days at the end of the year learning about what to expect for the upcoming year and classroom clean up, and much more. Realizing that math, reading, writing, social studies type subjects, and other academics don’t happen for the 180 days of B&M schools has freed me up this year to schedule less than 180 days of the 3r’s, history, science, and other subjects.
The SCM guide has an exam or optional catch up week scheduled into their guides each term. If your math program is 180 lessons, I would suggest either doubling up on the easier lessons or skipping the ones your child knows. Or you could do math everyday and leave the rest when something extracurricular comes up. I schedule my essential subjects that have to be completed in a certain number of lessons to finish by the end of the year (like my math and history lessons) first thing in the morning. After that comes subjects like foreign language, poetry, memory work, and others that I intend to cover each day but if it gets missed once in a while for a park day, field trip, or appointment, it’s no big deal in that I just pick up where I left off the next day we are home all morning. in these subjects, I don’t get behind because they aren’t scheduled lessons. I also do a loop schedule where I rotate out nature study, picture study, composer study, and PE leaving Friday as a catch up day if any of those subjects get missed during the week. On weeks when the weather is bad or when we take a curriculum break, we do more games, art projects, cooking, and other fun things that otherwise don’t fit into our regular school day. HTH
I schedule for year-round. My state requires 180 days. I schedule around our religious holidays.
I basically set goals for what I want to get accomplished, decide what plays, musicals, museums, etc. we will go to see, use Sonya’s 5-step scheduling, enter it into the CM Org., adjusting as needed through the year and that’s that. If they finish early for the eyar’s requirements, I may give them something more or just let it go till next eyar and that enables them to have more earned free-time.
I don’t schedule the extracurricular into the schedule, just when the day comes, I have them do what they can do – some or all – and that’s it. We have so many doctor’s appts. due to my husband’s issues, that I have to be flexible and have materials that travel well.
I have 4 full days scheduled, with Sun. all day and Fri. morning open for anything necessary that needs doing.
Some days, times of the year, or during times or stressful events, they just do the bare minimum (this is temporary) For me, that means:
math
Hebrew
lit. book
Spelling for my son
grammar
science or history (depending upon the day)
Also to take pressure off of me:
things on audio and/or DVD
and I’ll just read one thing a day, in addition to Bible.
I hope you find your happy place with scheduling.
We do approximately 180 full days. During the summer we have a modified schedule but we continue to school part-time.
We do 180 school days, with a week consisting of 4 “full” days and 1 easy day, with only 2 or 3 subjects. I tend to schedule in terms of weeks (36 weeks for 180 days in a school year). We start in mid-July, so we can take a week off every 5 or 6 weeks during the school year, along with time off around Thanksgiving and Christmas. The frequent breaks allow alot of flex time in case someone needs to make up some work; they also help keep us from burning out! We usually school until the second week of June, and have a short summer break of 5 or 6 weeks.
Like you, I also am a type A and I while I do “feel behind” when we miss a day I have managed over the course of five years to relax a bit and if it takes me longer than the 180 days then it takes longer. Life gets in the way sometimes, especially this year for us, and we are going to have a short summer break. But the kids usually are more than ready to start school in August as they really enjoy home school so I don’t feel guilty. No matter how hard we try there are going to be days missed due to Dr or dentist appointments, sickness, field trips, to nice a day to stay inside, etc. I have learned to let it go but unfortunately I can’t tell you how I did it! It just sort of happened.
I am big on finding the educational value in every activity and if it is not there then what on earth are those kids up to, right?!
I school year round and around lots of different things that come up. I don’t know when I started thinking of “life is learning and learning is life” but it’s helped me see the value of even the most mudane of times – car rides become vocablulary lessons, current event discussions, heartfelt character buidling moments, math drills, you name it … same goes for all those “off” times too. Poking our lessons in all over helps me feel accomplished and shows them that there is no special time we learn but that we are doing it all the time. Learning is ours for the taking! Didn’t have time to read all comments, sorry if redundant! I schedule every subject but not exact pages. We use the SCM handbooks. Since make-up days are scheduled in and some lessons are short enough to double up its not hard to finish in 180 days. Our math program is 30 weeks and if they get the concept right away they don’t have to do all pages. Literature books we just keep reading the next one and read in the summer, too. Writing and grammar programs we just keep moving through and start the new book when finishing the old. We have to do 180 days. If its the end if the year and there’s something I really want to finish I may spend more time on it and extend readings into summer, save for following year, or just skip if not that relevant! HTH some:) Gina
I school year round and plan 3 months (12 weeks) of work and give myself 4 months to complete it. I’m very type A, but am not going to stress us over an arbitrary schedule.
I just left a session at the Charlotte Mason Institute conference on narrative and one thing Dr. Carroll Smith talked about was abstract time vs. narrative time. Abstract time is measured with a watch and a calendar and tends to add stress when we fall behind. Narrative time is “once upon a time” or “grandma comes when the tree blooms”. Narrative time is a much more enjoyable/peaceful place to live. It is still bound by abstract time in a sense, but we should not be slaves to it. Nothing horrible will happen if we take 200 days to complete a required 180 or even if we complete 160 and play with our kids more. (I recognize many states have the 180 requirement, but some don’t.)
We must do 180 days. I count field trips + math or grammar or language arts or reading (depending on the student) as a full day. I found out this year that we had no trouble making our 180 days. (I also count days spent volunteering: sewing circle, kitchen committee at church, etc. in the same manner). Our trouble was finishing the books!
I have heard that doing 2/3 of the book is considered a full school year…so that’s what we did for some of our subjects.
This year, I’m encouraging my daughter to do math and language arts throughout the summer —not counting it as a “day”, just working ahead. This way, hopefully, our days and our books will end together! 🙂
I school year round and around lots of different things that come up. I don’t know when I started thinking of “life is learning and learning is life” but it’s helped me see the value of even the most mudane of times – car rides become vocablulary lessons, current event discussions, heartfelt character buidling moments, math drills, you name it … same goes for all those “off” times too. Poking our lessons in all over helps me feel accomplished and shows them that there is no special time we learn but that we are doing it all the time. Learning is ours for the taking! 
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