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Do you observe school "breaks?"


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The more I am learning about homeschooling, the more questions I have! We are doing afterschooling right now, and it is the start of Thanksgiving break. My son is somewhat reluctant to do much of his work over the upcoming break. He's a fifth grader, so he's used to his breaks.

 

Do homeschoolers observe these breaks? I can only assume you don't work through 365 days, but what about holidays, and especially summer vacation? I know each family sets their own schedule, but I am curious to see what others do. I believe that everyone needs breaks and vacations, but I also know that there is some debate in the public school systems about year 'round school being the better option, with so many weeks on and then so many off.

 

I anxiously await your thoughts!:lurk5:

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Since hubby teaches and I have one in ps, we follow the school breaks. That doesn't mean we don't do anything though. Last week, with a school break we went to the homeschool bowling and the week before that we all went on the homeschool field trip. When both kids were in PS, we never took the full summer off and they always had "morning work" that needed to be completed before they could go out to play. This was usually math and language work. We don't do full work-days on the days off, but we most likely do something.

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When we first started homeschooling we observed school breaks because we had friends in public school.

 

We are in our 7th year of schooling and we usually take one week at Thanksgiving and 2 weeks at Christmas, much like the public schools. Other than that we usually start in August, end in May and take breaks when we want.

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We take the same breaks the ps does, except that we do work through the summer. We take off the first and last weeks of summer vacation and we usually take off one week somewhere near the middle of summer break. Aside from that, we do math every day during the summer, but cut way back on everything else so that we do just enough to finish whatever programs we are using for English, history, science, ...

 

An exception is that my high schoolers have found that pushing some of their electives to the summer makes their schoolyears much easier to handle.

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We follow school breaks as it suits us. Usually we do a week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, and two weeks somewhere in the spring. We don't do three+ day weekends. In the summer we do maintenance, which means we practice skills learned during the year without going forward much.

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We don't do the one day here and there stuff. We don't do snow days, LOL. We do take off longer when we want to take a trip. This fall, for instance, we took two trips back to back and I spread one week of school out over the course of two weeks around those trips. We've been taking off three weeks for Christmas the past several years, but won't this year due to that fall vacation. We're taking off next week. So all in all, we get the same number of days off, pretty much, just not at the same times.....

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I mostly keep my own schedule. My younger son, 5 years old, gets special ed services via the public school as a homeschooler. Because of that, I have to keep an eye on the public school calandar. On days there is no school he doesn't get speech therapy etc. If I didn't have that connection I would have no idea what they do over there. I am still sort of stunned by how many 'conference days' and 'superintendent days' and random three day weekends there are. I should mention that we do school all 5 weekdays. I do not make them do school on the weekends or in the evenings. When we finish for the day, we are done.

 

I will give the boys thursday and friday off this week. It is their first weekedays off since we started in september. We will go until just before christmas. I start again after the new year. We don't take any holidays or weeks off until summer vacation. Well... I might go visit my mom for a week in the spring but that is random.

 

Schools here finish at the end of June and I continue untill around then. We will start to finish books starting around May and I just let things fall off and get lighter until we are done. I take all of July and August off mostly because there are too many other things to do. I live in the NE and summers are brief. We simply must do as much as we can outside before the dark days are here again. It isn't hard to spend all winter and spring working because it is grey and dull. What else would we do?

 

I do have my older son do some school during the summer but nothing big. We do stuff like work through a kumon workbook to keep math skills sharp. I generally pick one that covers skills from the previous year. For example, my son finished 4th grade last June. I had him work though the 4th grade Kumon math books during the summer. I didn't expect him to learn new skills but I did want him to keep his old ones fresh. I expect I will continue doing reading instruction and math with my younger son this summer. He is just too young to take a 2 month break from new skills.

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Nope.

 

We school year round 6 weeks on and 1 week off. We are taking the entire week off for Thanksgiving...and will for Christmas and Easter too...and that leaves plenty of wiggle room for traveling & illnesses & life as it comes up. I find that we all have symptoms of burnout beyond 6 weeks of schooling and boredom beyond a week of break.

 

I am making my dc read to me daily over breaks...and managing to sneak in some educational games.

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Generally, we sort-of do. Most of the kids' outside the house activities follow the county system's schedule, and it's nice to have a week now and then that is totally free. On the other hand, it's also nice to get work done on a week when we don't have to run around to various things. :)

 

So, for instance, we started two weeks ahead of the p.s. school system, took off a couple of days for dd's birthday, went to the beach in September, will take off two days this week, and about 8 or so days for Christmas & New Year's. But we'll take a whole week later in January for Disney World. :) I also require "educational activities" throughout a break longer than a day or two.

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Yes, we follow the public school schedule for breaks. I have one child and this allows him to have a more active social life with the neighborhood kids. He has a lot of friends in the neighborhood and trying to school with the phone and doorbell ringing just doesn't work well.

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The more I am learning about homeschooling, the more questions I have! We are doing afterschooling right now, and it is the start of Thanksgiving break. My son is somewhat reluctant to do much of his work over the upcoming break. He's a fifth grader, so he's used to his breaks.

 

Do homeschoolers observe these breaks? I can only assume you don't work through 365 days, but what about holidays, and especially summer vacation? I know each family sets their own schedule, but I am curious to see what others do. I believe that everyone needs breaks and vacations, but I also know that there is some debate in the public school systems about year 'round school being the better option, with so many weeks on and then so many off.

 

I anxiously await your thoughts!:lurk5:

 

The first three years that we homeschooled, we went year round. But we did take long family trips in September and January. The last couple of years I've found it is harder to keep up the year round thing.

 

There are so many activities that are tied to the summer break (summer swim team, scout camps, sports trips) that we tend to go to about half time over the summer. I also go very low during December because I want to concentrate on the celebration of Christmas and Advent. We also tend to have family visit during December and I prioritize spending time with them.

 

But we didn't take off the week the kids here had for fall break or all of the days they get off for teacher conferences. So I think it evens up.

 

The other quirk we've had is that we have often moved in the winter, with months of dislocation between homes (international moves). So there are days with nothing to do but school or learn about our new hometown and other days when nothing gets done but packing or unpacking. So we have had to go well into the summer just to get done what I think should be done to complete a year's worth of school.

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We don't follow any particular schedule, nor do we have official breaks. We take off when the mood strikes. Much of our off time comes when weather in Florida is the nicest, which isn't summer.

 

Still, I do allow time off if a school friend comes to the door during one of their school breaks. Ds has several school friends in the neighborhood, including 2 his age who live right across the street.

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We school 4-days a week year round. Our semesters are set up like this:

 

June-August is summer semester, we have a 1 week break for either VBS or 4th of July week, This is when my records for the year start

 

September-November is Fall semester, we have Labor Day week and Thanksgiving week off, my oldest moves ahead a grade

 

December is Christmas school, we do 2-3 weeks of work after Thanksgiving where we do a lapbook about Christmas, read about Christmas and do math, we have 2-3 weeks off at the end of the year

 

January-April is Winter/Spring semester, our new curriculum starts at this time, we have 1 week off for spring break

 

May is summer break, we take 2-4 weeks off

 

Our weeks are Monday through Thursday with Friday's off for play group.

 

Hope this helps.:001_smile:

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We follow our own schedule but every year is different, depending on what is going on in our lives at the time.

 

This year, we took the month of July off and then started back in Aug. We went on a month long road trip to visit my parents. We took off the 2 weeks it took us to drive there and back. We are working double duty right now so that we can have the month of Dec. off (we are Canadian so we have already had Thanksgiving.) We will work straight through, taking a day here and there off when we need it. From where I am sitting now, I think we will be done our school year in May and just might take June and July off ( we will still be doing math and reading so it isn't a pure break ;))

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Nope. We're schooling M-W this week (PS has Wed off). Christmas we will take about 2 weeks off ONLY because we will be out of town. Otherwise we usually take about a week.

 

I like the flexibility to take a week or so off if something "comes up." We just moved and took about 3 weeks off for that. It was nice to not stress about taking 3 weeks just before holidays. I have a friends who are taking from this week until after Jan 1.

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We don't observe PS breaks, heck I don't even know when they are.

 

Anyway. We do our own thing. I use to try to start school in Aug, but my youngest is a swimmer and that is his only month off from swimming so we don't start till Sept now.

 

But we take our own breaks as they suit us or as needed. We take off when he has long swim meet weekends.

 

Also he has been in the hospital once during the school year, and dr's appts and such, SO we just do what we need to do.

 

We do usually take most of the summer off, I did that especially when they were younger. We've hit high school now though so it is more likly to work until the program is done even if it takes us into the summer

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Sometimes. I can't keep track if all the random days the PS takes off, so I observe the major ones and skip the others. I do, however, reserve the right to take off whenever it makes sense for life's circumstances. We just homeschooled through a remodel because I don't take off school unless something major is going on. :)

 

We observe the summer break. I use that time to relax and plan the next school year. :)

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I do this year! We're having a 3 week break for Winter holidays and a 4 week break between grades in July. I've homeschooled for 10 years and we didn't have set breaks. We just took off when we needed to. It was finally too much to deal with. Now that ds14 is in high school, he needs those planned breaks to give him a goal to work towards. As for when they were younger, they did often complain they felt like they were doing school all the time. I wish I had listened to them and made more of a schedule. Everyone needs time to recharge. I'm always more enthusiastic than my children about schoolwork so I just pushed them ahead on my own schedule.

 

Editing to add: This year we're only doing a 4-day school week. I'm in school myself and I have to have some time for my own work. It's working out quite well actually. The kids enjoy their 3 day weekends.

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We follow the major school breaks except for summer. I like ds to have a chance to spend time with his cousins that go to public school. We school almost year round, with a month off in the summer, but lots of breaks for fun stuff. I ignore the single days off the public schools have unless my sister and I decide to do something with the kids.

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We hs year around, and I don't specifically take off any school breaks. Generally we do full schedules for 2 weeks, then the kids work on their independent work while I do planning, then we do another full 2 weeks, and we all get a week off. At Christmass/Thanksgiving and June I have to tweak it because we do always take of thanksgiving week, two weeks at Christmas and a week in June for VBS.

 

Heather

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We sort of do. My dd attends an orchestra class at our local middle school, so she is very aware of their schedule. This year they cut a lot of Fridays from the public school schedule for budget reasons, but we still homeschool on those days. I only make up weekly school schedules from about September to mid-June, but we do carry on with a lighter school schedule in the summers, leaving ample room for whatever summer activities may strike our fancy. In summers we mainly do a lot of reading, a bit of creative writing, and some math maintenance.

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Each year I take the ps calendar and rework it to fit our needs. We are off this entire week for example. That is because I host Thanksgiving and it is wonderful to have time to prepare.

 

My dd is a competitive gymnast and in the summer they workout in the mornings from 8-noon. I don't want to school around that. The gym bases their summer schedule on ps, so I do too.

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Since all of my kids have been to school at one time or another and I have one there now, we tend to follow the schedule to a certain extent. The two that are home are finally learning to be more flexible. They each just took trips that required at least three school days. They have worked on the weekends and will work the Friday after Thanksgiving to recover the time. We don't school in the summer except for math. Swimmer Dude decided that it wasn't worth the time to review at the beginning of the year. We keep our schedule fairly flexible.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've got one in school, so we're following his scholl schedule. Which can be a pain sometimes - I just noticed that he's off on Wednesday this week! So now I've got to adjust my homeschooler's schedule. He is not a fan of having to do schoolwork when his brother has a vacation day!

 

During the summer we usually do something, but it's minimal - maybe a page/day from the (math) "Key to..." series and a couple of Spanish DVDs each week. A page of spelling or vocabulary each day. (Of course camps and vacations mess up this plan!). And some required reading.

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No, I do not observe the same breaks as public school. I would have my children in public school if that were the case. We only take breaks for Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and Easter (Good Friday). I have the children work from the last week in August to the last week in May. We are done. Summer break is from June to August. We don't take winter breaks, spring breaks, or mid-term breaks. We live up north. There are snow days and public school is off. Those are all wastes of time. That is ridiculous all the break public schools take!!! I just do it from start to finish. My children are done with their readings and workbooks. Then we are done!!

 

Blessings,

Karen

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/testimony

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No... we can't really do that.

 

We have family that comes to see us at odd times -- because it fits their schedule. It is pretty difficult to have 12 children running around the house and force mine to ignore their cousins and do their school work. So, our breaks are whenever we need them.

 

This impacts our Thanksgiving/Christmas and spring breaks as well.

 

So, while I would *like* to not do school for a month, we really can't take that time, because we took so much in September, October, and November.

 

Moreover, this year, we start building our house and we will all be working on it. So, we need to get our school work done (or mostly done) so that momma won't go completely berzerk trying to school, pack, lay tile, put together closets, etc.

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Yes, mostly.

 

We live in a very close knit neighborhood and teh kids have friends who homeschool, attend University Model School, attend private school and attend public school (as my DS12 does now).

 

Because of this, we generally follow the PS schedule for breaks and holidays so they can enjoy the time with their friends.

 

I do have teh kids do about an hour of work per day during summer, though, because I don't think that a 3 month break is the best approach if you desire any sort of retention. So we don't really move very far forward during summer break, but we make sure not to move backward.

 

For summer 2011, I do plan to have DS12 do a full writing program because I'm unsatisfied with that aspect of his schooling. He'll also work on math, and I'll probably plan this out with his math teacher so we are spending our time wisely in that area.

 

For DD, we will just continue with our loop schedule during the summer, spending only one hour per day. Another reason I love the loop!

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I guess it just depends on what your own situation is like! I don't much care for the idea of taking the whole summer off. I guess the flexibility is one of the reasons people homeschool in the first place. However, having a child in ps makes it difficult--like a previous poster said, it's hard to make one kid do school work while the other one is rambling around.

 

Thanks for all the great responses!

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