I can hardly believe it is already time to start planning out the school year again. Lately, I have been thinking of all the different ways there are to plan out our homeschool year. Most states have a law regarding how many days each family must conduct school. For most it is 180 days or 9 months. Many people start after Labor Day and school straight through until Christmas Break. Then they start back in January and finish in May – like a typical public school calendar. However, I’ve been contemplating the idea of schooling year-round and what that would entail. Here is what I came up with.
Year Round Homeschooling
3 Terms, 12 weeks each (5 days a week) each with a one month break in between (3×12=36, 36×5=180)
6 weeks on (5 days a week) and 2 weeks off plus 4 weeks off to use throughout the year or in one chunk (6×5=30, 30×6=180)
3 weeks on and one week off (5 days a week) and 4 weeks off either in one block or split perhaps 2 weeks at Christmas and 2 weeks in the Spring or Summer (3×5=15, 15×12=180)
4 day school week with 7 weeks off scattered throughout the year
What I’ve done is thought about the stage of life I am in as a homemaker and mother. I have 2 pre-schoolers and one infant, along with my 3 older kids. For me the 3 months on and one month off model probably wouldn’t work as well. There may be sick kids or crazy house cleaning projects and cleanups that need to happen. Because life is busy and not as consistent as I would want, I will cross that one off my list for this year.
The second one on the list isn’t bad, but that might not lend enough flexibility for me, either. I narrowed it down to 3 weeks on and one week off or the 4 day school week. After talking with my husband, we first agreed that what would lift some of the burdens of caring for small children and our home while homeschooling, this year, would be to school year round with the 4 day school week model. This allows us to take 2 weeks off for Christmas, 2 weeks off in the Spring and 3 weeks off in the Summer for our “breaks”. This model lends itself to a more laid back week – where only 4 days are centered around homeschooling and the 5th can be focused on fun, games, field trips, a day spent with friends, extra cleaning or whatever comes up!
However, after further consideration, we talked about having a few more “weeks” free will give the most flexibility for this year. We are going with the 3 weeks on one week off model. If we start our year the 2nd week of August and do 3 weeks on one week off we can have the entire week of Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, and two weeks around the 4th of July and still get in all of our 36 weeks of school!
How are you planning your school year? Do you school year round? Leave a comment below!
[…] believe that we are already to our first week long break. For those of you who missed it, I wrote here about how to plan a year-round homeschool. The way we are choosing to go year-round this year is […]