The question of schooling year round plagues not only public schools, but homeschools as well. As a youngster, the thought of year-round school was detestable, but as a teaching mother, I see with clarity the benefits of this concept.
So, rather than debate the topic, I thought I would give you our family’s top reasons for homeschooling year round:
1. Life throws curveballs. Homeschooling year round offers the flexibility to dodge those curve balls without totally losing our footing. Newly pregnant with horrific morning sickness? Take a break! Needing to visit a sick relative? Take a break! A natural disaster occurs that affects your family? Take a break! There is no guilt involved because you will be picking up right where you left off when the time comes.
2. You are not beholden to a calendar. So, junior finishes his math a month early. What do you do? Move on! Little Susie just isn’t getting her grammar? Keep going over it until she does! Of course, these concepts hold true no matter whether you homeschool year round or not, but if you are less dependent on a calendar to tell you when to finish and when to start, you feel more at ease with allowing the children to go at their own pace.
3. No need to take a refresher. There is a reason most books have about 30 lessons of review — summer steals brain cells! We are actually able to skip about 30 lessons in some of our books because we are homeschooling year round. Delightful news for both mom and children!
Do you officially school year round or do you have any questions about it?
Read more about what life is like raising all these arrows!
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We’re year rounders too. It just makes sense on so many levels, one of which is being able to keep a family routine going. Taking a 3 month break from our schoolwork implements bad habits and attitudes when we tell the children it is time to start working again.
Life is school, so why try to compartmentalize the two and only ‘do school’ between certain hours on certain days of the week in specific months of the year?
Tristan´s last blog ..Pacing Your Days
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molly Reply:
March 4th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Just checked out your blog. Great ideas. keep ‘em coming
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I also homeschool year round. For basically the same reasons you mentioned. Also in the summer we can do more stuff that we can’t do in the colder months of the year and its just so much better for us to keep the information going rather than taking a break and the girls losing some of the information they have learned over the previous year.
Dianna A. @ Sincerely Me´s last blog ..In Bloom Giveaway & New Butler Bag
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I would love to hear more about this very subject. We are in our first year of HS. We started the same time as our county PS, but I am now seeing how I would love the freedom of year round. I am wondering how to address the questions we will get from friends and family when I say we will be doing school in July.
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Amy @ Raising Arrows Reply:
March 4th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Molly,
Often, just giving the reasons I listed in the post are enough to explain to others why we do school year round. I know many families that take every Friday off or take every 3rd week off. It’s really all about flexibility and the freedom to do school in a way that best fits our family. That is something the public school system just can’t offer.
Amy @ Raising Arrows´s last blog ..The To-Do List – Getting Started
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molly Reply:
March 4th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
You are right. But sometimes people can’t see the obvious benefits for my family and our needs. Most everyone around me is “brainwashed” with the PS way.
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this is our first year homeschool after many years of ps. we de-schooled for a good while, and that was the best thing…
we recently made the decision to school “all the time” our book learnin’ times are shorter when the days are longer,
I like teaching a new concept, and ruminating in that concept a bit…not check it off the list and move on…sometimes a few days off helps them actually really get the idea in their mind.
anneofalamo´s last blog ..What we have been doing?
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My boys are 4 and 2, and we do school all year round! Last summer we reviewed the letters my then 3 yo learned early in the pervioius fall. Because we take extra time off for holidays to visit family out of state, we need that flex time!
Sandra´s last blog ..Sledding
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We feel the same way. Life is school and school is life. I don’t want to worry about time.
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We school year-round too. And our “school year” runs from January to December, which just makes more sense for us since our kids have birthdays at the end of the year so we start a new “grade”, a new age and a new year all at the same time.
When we started homeschooling, I read The First Year Homeschooling Your Child, and one of the things that really resonated with me from that book is just how enslaved parents are to the public school schedule. Vacations, doctor visits, piano lessons, sports – all those things have to be arranged so they don’t interfere with school. AND every single other parent in the country is trying to do the exact same thing at the exact same time. To me one of the best perks of homeschooling is that WE are in charge of our schedule and we can choose to go to the doctor or the museum or the movies when those places aren’t clogged with tons of other parents and kids.
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Amy @ Raising Arrows Reply:
March 4th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Exactly!
Amy @ Raising Arrows´s last blog ..The To-Do List – Getting Started
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This is our first year homeschooling, and even though we going to be finished with our Calvert curriculum in May, I want to keep doing school over the summer. Right now I’m planning to just follow or interests and work on concepts that my daughter still hasn’t quite got yet.
Riceball Mommy´s last blog ..Feeling a bit better and a late start
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Amy @ Raising Arrows Reply:
March 4th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I know one family that switches to Unit Studies based on the children’s interests during the summer months. They are a farming family and that method gives the flexibility they need over the summer months.
I think it is good to “switch things up” a bit. :)
Amy @ Raising Arrows´s last blog ..The To-Do List – Getting Started
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I have decided this year that during the summer, we are (hopefully) going to do two days of school per week. That way, we get a restful summer, but we also keep up the learning and have less information lost. (The brain drain was especially bad this last summer!)
Angie´s last blog ..Cheaper Solutions for Lunch on the Go
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We officially school year-round. Yet we take a lot of time off in the summers since we moved here. It’s extremely hot and so I send the kids out to play in the mornings. Then in the afternoons we go to the pool. So. I don’t focus as much on school. Maybe some phonics and I think this summer I’ll include math.
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I am about to embark on our homeschooling journey. I haved been thinking about homeschooling year round and I love all these reasons. Thanks for the post! I think it will help in making our desicion. One question though, when you homeschool year round when do you begin the new shcool year? How does that work?
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Amy @ Raising Arrows Reply:
March 4th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Amy,
I go ahead and roll over a new year in September when public school does it. That way on apps and such for things that are not strictly homeschooling we conform to a standard that most people are familiar with.
That said, our school work is not grade specific and we roll over to the next book, etc. whenever we’ve finished the last one.
Amy @ Raising Arrows´s last blog ..The To-Do List – Getting Started
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This is something I have been considering. Last year for pre-K, we ended in May and started K this past Fall. I can see the many benefits of schooling year round.
Jenny´s last blog ..stART: Corduroy’s Easter Party
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This will be my 3rd year homeschooling and I love the idea of schooling year round! It drives me crazy to feel like I have to finish curriculum by the “end of the year”. And then we have to spend a month or so after the summer to review! I have a couple of questions though…We live in Tennessee and the law here requires us to school 180 days and the church-related school we register with requires us to keep attendance. I think their calendar is July through June. Those of you that have to keep attendance, how do you do that? I hope I’m explaining myself clearly.
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Amy @ Raising Arrows Reply:
March 5th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Britney,
Our state also requires 180 days equivalent; however, I don’t keep attendance. Hopefully, someone else can answer your question specifically.
Amy @ Raising Arrows´s last blog ..The To-Do List – Getting Started
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Tammy Reply:
April 27th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
We must be registered with the same umbrella school or our schools just do things similarly. I am in TN too and trying to figure out how to do the year round schedule from a paperwork perspective as well.
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Jamie Reply:
April 29th, 2010 at 11:42 am
I had to fill out attendance records last year to our school district in CA and we schooled year round. I just filled in the days that their calendar said should be “attended” and turned it in. I didn’t really feel like it mattered, or was any of their business which day of the week we actually did our work on. Sure, I marked Mon-Fri, but we often took Wednesdays off and did work on Saturdays. We also took off the month of December, but they also didnt recognize the fact we started in July. As long as they see that 180 days are marked I assumed they could care less.
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I think it’s not only important to have learning going on all year around, but also to start your child doing schoolwork when they are ready rather than doing it at the conventional ages suggested by PS systems. My daughter knew the alphabet before she turned 2 years old, and she started reading when she was 3 years old – because when she was ready, I started teaching her, rather than waiting. She is 5 years old now, with a reading age of a 5th or 6th grade child. Being in tune with your children is so important. My son on the other hand is not so advanced, so I am limiting his school hours greatly – he is 4 years old and can read, but just doesn’t have the same interest. Boys mature a lot slower than girls! All that being said, we keep learning year-around, even if it is just an hour a day. It is so important – children are sponges, they are constantly learning and soaking in information. Over the summer period it gets terribly hot where we live (Australia), so sitting and doing schoolwork is not the most pleasant thing in the world… Which is why we shake things up and focus on learning through other activities like art, educational games, crafts, science experiments and other fun activities that also teach things in more practical ways than schoolwork. We learned hand-sewing, we did fine-motor skill games like Jenga, days of cooking loads of yummy foods, and so on this past summer. :) Not all schoolwork/learning has to involve text books! When we took a vacation, we stopped off at educational places so that even our holidays were a learning curve (a dairy farm to learn about milking cows, an animal nursery to learn about baby animals, a Steam festival to learn about historical steam vehicles, a gold-mining town from the 1800s for more practical history, etc)! There’s learning to be had in everything!! :)
Clara´s last blog ..Our Daughter
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I think we would get downright bored if we took three months off in the summer! We school year round, too and I love the flexibility it gives us!
Angela @ Homegrown Mom´s last blog ..Do you Have a Family Fun Night Idea?
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Hi Amy~
We to homeschool year round!
Life always has opportunities to teach.
During the Summer there is so much fun stuff to teach……maybe not math or spelling but…..
The beach~
camping~
on a hike or bike ride~
Out in the garden~
going on a bug hunt……the list goes on!
Blessings,
Georgiann
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This is our first year to homeschool, but my daughter LOVES it and even “does school” on the weekends at times. I was just pondering the idea of year-round school the other day, and I think, at least for now, we’re going to go with it. It helps to have some learning each day! :)
Ashley´s last blog ..Good Morning (uh.. Afternoon), Company Girls!
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If our message to our children is that learning should never stop then year-round homeschooling makes a lot of sense. I don’t want my children to feel like learning or reading is something you do beacuse you have to, or because it’s scheduled. I want them to know that learning only stops when you die. So if your still breathing…as far as Im concerned, you going to be learning.
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I am currently homeschooling 4 teenagers (16, 16, 15, 14) and we school year round. Our summers are less stressful and include the subjects of Math + 1 other. Math, because we are never at the end of a book; so why let the brain cells die off during the summer. The other subject may be one we couldn’t finish during the school calendar or something they want to learn about. One summer was reading through Ann Frank’s Diary and mapping out the movement of the armies. We learned a great deal about WWII just doing it. This year it may be the most excited yet…. World Geography!
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Hi! I live in SoCal and raise my 8yo Nephew and 6yo Niece. My Boyfriend and I have decided it would be best to homeschool my Nephew because he is a year behind(found out after I became Guardian) in school. He’s going into 3rd grade in Sept, but in reading and math he is a 1st grade level. We feel that homeschooling him with catch him up. Now my problem is, he H-A-T-E-S doing schoolwork, and is SUPER excited about summer coming so he doesn’t have to do anything. I would like to start the homeschooling process and do it year-round, how should I go about letting him know that he will now be doing school during the summer? I am predicting an argument will happen and he will get angry(something were working on) and not be willing to work.
Also, we have decided to keep my Niece in ps for another year. She is 6, but when it comes to acedemics, shes more of a 4yo. She started K in Sept, and just a few months ago finally knew how to spell her name. She freezes up a lot and ’shuts down’ and wont answer you. PS has opened her up a ton. I know it’s going to be challenging hsing one and not the other. I’m hoping to take her out mid year or just after 1st grade.
I would love any advice, tips and suggestions from anyone. Thanks!!!
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i have been homeschooling for 13 years. this is the first year i am considering all-year. we are moving from virginia to california in a few weeks and i know we will need extra time to fly back and see family and friends.
its just figuring out what KIND of schedule will work for us. and of course getting the teenagers to cooperate!
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