Every Fall I get asked the same question, “When are you starting school?” Every Spring it’s, “Have you finished up with school?” My answer to both questions is always the same – “Actually, we school year round.”
Schooling year round makes sense for our family. Without the routine that school brings, my children tend to run amok, and not in a good way. They watch too much TV, they start to bicker with each other, they get in my way. It never ends well.
I’d heard the many advantages of year round school, including greater retention of information and the ability to schedule multiple, smaller vacation times throughout the school year. I’d also heard other homeschoolers talk about a 4 day school week, an idea that really appealed to me. I combined the two concepts together, did a little math and came up with a plan.
Switching to a Year Round Schedule
Whether you use a packaged curriculum or design one of your own, you are probably structured around the 36 week, 180 day school year. If you take those 180 school days but divide them over a 4 day week, you get a 45 week school year instead. That in turn leaves 7 vacation weeks to spread out however you choose. Just like that, you have a plan for schooling year round.
To convert my preprinted Instructor’s Guide to meet my needs without retyping the whole thing was simple. The Instructor’s Guide schedule is printed with Monday through Friday across the top of the page, with each day’s work below. We complete the work for Monday through Thursday as scheduled, and save Friday’s work for the next week. The next week, we do Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday and Friday’s work is bumped to the next week, and so on throughout the year.
I’ve mentioned it before, but having our Fridays free has so many advantages. If we’ve fallen behind on our work, Friday is a make-up day. If not, we can do any projects that we don’t have time for during the week. Or we can run errands or catch up on housework. Or even just enjoy a day off!
Vacations
Many year round schoolers plan their vacations very deliberately. Some like to school for 9 weeks, then take a week long break. I don’t schedule our vacations because somehow it just all works out. We take a week or two off around Christmas, another week around Easter. Cub Scout camp takes up most of a week, so does Vacation Bible School. That’s 5 weeks of vacation right there. The other two weeks end up getting planned around grandparent visits or family vacations.
Planning VS. Not Planning
I have to admit that I am a planner. I like a nice neat schedule to refer to…and to deviate from as I choose. Planning my school year is my safety net so that I know I will accomplish all or nearly all of our goals. But that doesn’t work for everyone. If you are not a big planner, please don’t think that my way is the only way to school year round. In fact, if you school year round without planning as much as I do, please share your ideas! If I get enough comments about year round school with less structure, I’d be happy to write them up into a post of their own. Or if you’ve got lots of ideas to share, please consider stepping up as a guest writer for The Homeschool Classroom!
So tell me…do you school year round? If so, why? And how do you make a curriculum that is meant for a 36 week year stretch into a longer year?
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Lorri is chief cook, bottle washer and school year planner over at The Mac and Cheese Chronicles.
photo by Eric Rice
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
We decided to year round school also – the thing I like best about it is we can vacation “deliberately”. We are taking most of December off this year – between a quick trip to DisneyWorld and a cruise, Christmas and New Year’s not much schooling will get done, but it doesn’t matter, since we’re already half way through our required days!
We also school year-round, although not very neatly planned out. My kids’ behavior deteriorates quickly when they get too much media time. With year-round schooling, we keep the same general routine all year – no media till after 4pm, some academic stuff every day, etc.
Great post!
Catherine
About half of the public schools where I live are year-round, and adults are used to seeing children during the day during their “track-out” period. I think it’s a great idea–I love the idea of having flexibility, and I agree that kids need structure year round!
I love schooling year round. We tend to focus on the arts and electives in the summer though because there are so many terrific summer programs that we like to take advantage of. We also allow for “life happening” when I’m scheduling. My kids also think nothing of having school on a Saturday—so it all works out. We school 7 days a week year round when we need to!
; 0 )
We school year round as well… we do take time off when we need to.. or just want to… so that we are able to keep pluggin along without feeling overwhelmed….
We follow a basic routine everyday… and mix and match a little here and there… I tryt o find activities and Extracurricular things for us to do as well to keep things fun….
If we did not do this… y kids too would be watching tv all day.. playing playstation games and fighting with each other… Having somewhat of a set routine.. helps to keep us all on track and going in the right direction.
Great post!! I am new to this site.. found it because of the blog awards!! I added you guys to my follow list so I can come back and learn and share… Congrats!! =)
I’m not exactly sure what we’re doing at this point. LOL We are just schooling about 4 – 5 days per week, and going with it like that. We started in July, and I think we won’t be done until May, because of having some times where we have taken a week (or half a week) off here or there.
I don’t really have to modify our curriculum, because we are not using a set curriculum. I am, however, seriously considering using Sonlight next year.