Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

This topic has 11 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 13 years ago by morgrace.

Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

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April 17, 2012 at 8:44 pm
morgrace
Participant
Just curious, for those of you who school year round:
Do you take any addtional time off at the end of your school year? Or do you just keep on your same schedule of 3 weeks school, 1 week off (or whatever combination you use, we do 5 weeks on, 1 off). Between taking only 1 week off at Christmas (the natives were restless) and no vacations in the budjet this year, I figure we might have up to 4 “extra” weeks after we finish Term 3. I was just going to start in on next year’s materials after the week off, but then wondered if a longer break might be nice? How long would you take?
April 17, 2012 at 9:25 pm
4myboys
Participant
I’m still trying to find a good schedule myself. I guess we really only took two weeks at Christmas and two weeks from the end of March until after Easter. We did have a light schedule (just basics) through December and while family visited in November & early March. I intend to have a light scehdule through the summer as well, but will take time off for vacation (dh has four weeks he needs to take before September, so we’ll probably take at least 4 weeks off through July & August).
April 17, 2012 at 9:41 pm
amama5
Participant
I’m beginning to think we must take too much time off! My friend uses Ambleside, and only has a few weeks off per year, less than 5 I’d say. If you follow SCM 3 12-week terms, you need 36 weeks of schooling. So 52-36=16 weeks off. Our public schools gets around 10 weeks off in the summer, then spring break + lots of other holidays. So we do three terms (we don’t have a day or week off in the 12 weeks unless it’s a birthday or major holiday), and have about 3 weeks off in between two of them, and then a really long break (now) for our summer, about 8 weeks. We still do math and reading for several of those weeks off, but not other subjects. My state requires we do 1000 hours, and we easily get that done (and more) in those 36 weeks of school. Maybe I’m missing something though, if so please let me know!:)
April 17, 2012 at 9:48 pm
4myboys
Participant
We put in no more than 2.5 hours a day right now. If you are putting in a 1000 hours over 36 weeks, your days must be twice as long as ours. That’s the difference. Next year my older son will probably be closer to 3.5 hours, but my younger will be putting in about the same. I don’t keep track of hours as we have no days/hours requirements in my province.
April 17, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Tia
Participant
amama5 – I l LOVE how that schedule looks! I’m going to kick that around for a week or two…you may get a pm from me. 😉
Also, i think we must live in the same state. lol
April 17, 2012 at 10:31 pm
Hope
Member
We school for 36 weeks about 3-4 hours a day though my state has no requirements. We do 6 week on, 1 week off with a longer Christmas break and 6 weeks during summer. This year though we are almost done with all our curriculum so we may end up having more like 8 weeks for summer. During the summer “break”, we will still read great books, play math games, and then concentrate on art and stuff we often skip during the school year.
April 17, 2012 at 11:10 pm
Laura.bora
Participant
We school year round with about 2 weeks off around Christmas – New Years. We take a week off for Thanksgiving – but we usually go on a few educational field trips – so that counts as schooling for us. We always take birthdays off (4 in total – we don’t take mama and papa’s birthday off). We take about 1 week off in August when we visit relatives on Long Island and we take two weeks off at some other point to go on vacation. And when we feel burnt, we may take a day or two off here and there. So I would think we take off somewhere between 8 – 10 weeks off during the year. We are super flexible, and we always take breaks for “spring days”. Public Schools get “snow days”, we get “spring days” !! Kids Love them! School is canceled due to nice weather!
April 18, 2012 at 12:05 am
Helen
Participant
That’s so funny. I love the idea of getting off for “spring days”. Makes complete sense. A great benefit of homeschooling is enjoying life. Actually living it. Right?
Well, we take off during the month of July. We resume in September. We do a general 5 weeks on, 1 week off routine. It really helps to keep up with housework and other things. We take a week off for Thanksgiving and the whole month of December. And Easter week off. I like taking time off to really enjoy the major holidays.
April 18, 2012 at 12:44 am
4myboys
Participant
I agree with the Spring days. When we first started homeschooling my husband promised the boys they would get all the same days off as the PS, including snow days. (Unfortunately, he didn’t consult me before making this promise.) Then he wanted them to have the same March break as their PS friends. I had to sit him down and explain that we couldn’t take a week off in mid March if we were going away for vacation the last week of March, first week of April. Thankfully he understood. I also explained that if there is a blizzard outside, we might as well be using the time to catch up on extra work rather than have them sitting around wanting to play video games or watch tv all day because they are bored. Save the days off for the good days when we can really enjoy it! He also understands my reasoning to keep some math and copy work going through the summer, especially for the sake of my older ds who has difficulty with both. I don’t want two and a half moths of no school undoing all the great strides he’s made this year.
I really enjoy reading other people’s schedules. I am trying to find the perfect fit for us. Where I work part-time (M-F mornings) I really need to keep my days shorter and one of the ways of doing this is to school fewer hours more days of the year.
April 18, 2012 at 1:24 am
Tecrz1
Participant
We do 6 weeks on, two weeks off. We take 4 weeks off in June. I like it because I can schedule half a term at a time. I scheduled our year so one of the two weeks was on Christmas. Also to accommodate a last minute vacation I had to do 5 weeks, 2 weeks off, then 7 weeks but it worked fine. We have a final summer half term in July and the first part of August, take 2 weeks off and then start a new year in September.
Tara
April 18, 2012 at 1:25 am
amama5
Participant
Laura.bora, that’s exactly how I feel! I purposefully scheduled our year around nice weather, we are off from mid April until June, and again in Sept. We aren’t pool people, so we might as well be schooling in the heat of summer! Why not mama and papa’s bdays off too? Just kidding, we all know that would put us behind quickly!
4myboys, no we only “school” 2.5-3 hours a day too, but the rest of the day/year is filled with school that doesn’t seem like school:) Educational computer time, free reading, trips to the zoo, mom’s read alouds, gymanstics, art classes, etc.
3littlegirls, it is a small world:) Feel free to PM me, although we’ve only done one official year of that schedule so far, but we really enjoyed it. Right now they had one completely school free week, and we started back with fun math/extra practice yesterday, and still reading lots.
April 18, 2012 at 2:26 am
morgrace
Participant
Great ideas! I’ll have to do some spring days – I love that one!! We’ve done snow days because we didn’t get as much snow as usual this winter, and my kids could hardly wait to get outside. After finding a routine that works for us, it seems time for a break longer than a week. I wasn’t sure how long to make it.