4 day school week - how to make it work?

[AFthfulJrney]

We joined a co-op for the upcoming school year for the first time. I’m excited to give it a try, but stressing a bit about fitting everything into a 4 day work week. Those of you who are part of a weekly co-op, or have been a part of one in the past, any advice or tips to share on making it work successfully?

[Ellie]

We joined a co-op for the upcoming school year for the first time. I’m excited to give it a try, but stressing a bit about fitting everything into a 4 day work week. Those of you who are part of a weekly co-op, or have been a part of one in the past, any advice or tips to share on making it work successfully?

 

You just do the same way you did five days a week, but only four. IOW, you don't try to fit that fifth day's work into the other four.

[OneStepAtATime]

Well, you could make it easier by choosing materials that are scheduled for a 4 day school week anyway, such as IEW and Fix-it Grammar and Trail Guides to Geography, etc.  

 

Some programs that assume a 5 day week are also easy to adapt to a 4 day week.  For instance, if you were doing CLE math it is structured for a 5 day week and each Light Unit (there are 10 per year) has 17 lessons but some are not necessary.  You could make it a 4 day week by skipping the quizzes on days 5 and 10, then for lessons 12 and 13, then 14 and 15, combine them so the student is only doing the new material from the first lesson and the new and review material from the second.  The test (lesson 16) would then be on that Thursday.  Skip lesson 17.  It is unnecessary.  Voila, your math would be laid out ahead of time with a 4 day week with very little effort from you.

 

Or you can look over your years worth of lessons ahead of time with a calendar handy and figure out where you can skip stuff, double up on stuff, or just stretch it out a bit into Holidays or weekends or summers where necessary.

[rainbird2]

Are you opposed to doing a year round schedule, 6 weeks on and 1 week off?  How many days of school are you trying to accomplish in a year?

[scbusf]

We have been in a co-op for a few years now. We just do the next thing each day. I do not try to squeeze 5 days of work into 4. We school year-round, with various breaks whenever we want or need one. We also tend to vacation during the traditional school year, so we take a week off here and there.

 

I won't lie - it's hard to fit everything in. We also have lots of medical and counseling appointments to fit in. Some weeks, it just doesn't all get done.

[OneStepAtATime]

FWIW, when my kids were in school the school never finished all of a textbook, either.  Not once.  They either skipped chapters or just never got to the end.   

[scbusf]

FWIW, when my kids were in school the school never finished all of a textbook, either.  Not once.  They either skipped chapters or just never got to the end.   

 

I used to teach math in several public schools and we NEVER came close to finishing a textbook. I now teach math at a community college and we don't finish the books there, either!!!

Edited July 26, 2016 by scbusf

[Sherry in OH]

What subjects are covered by co-op?  Review, prep, and supplement as needed, but do not use a complete second curriculum for the same subjects at home.

 

Plan subjects covered at home as do the next thing – cover one lesson or spend an appropriate amount of time on the subject then stop for the day. Pick up at that point the next lesson day. Schedule math and language arts for four days a week.  Prioritize remaining subjects. Loop or block schedule any that do not need to covered daily.

[Esse Quam Videri]

We do a four day school week without being in a co-op :-). We've found that a peaceful atmosphere/ pace is essential for success and joy in our homeschool, so we make that as much a priority as our schoolwork. What makes this work is being HOME those four days-- no grocery shopping, running errands, or extra curriculars. We save all that for day five.

[Miss Tick]

Last year we did abbreviated math, writing, grammar and Spanish and Latin supplements (quick) in the morning before co-op.

 

This year co-op was moved to morning and I'm leery about doing that work in the afternoons, but that was our family deal.

 

I suppose if I were teaching from public school texts that were chosen for me by someone else I might not feel compelled to finish them, but that is not how I choose my texts. We may go into the summer, work a lesson or two over vacation, or continue with them the next year, but barring other issues our co-op is not a reason to shortchange academics. This year may be tricky.

Edited July 26, 2016 by SusanC

[SkateLeft]

We've done a teen co-op for the last couple of years. It offers mostly elective type classes, and I don't use it for any core classes, preferring to teach those myself. As a result, we do a 4 day school week and co-op is our social/enrichment/fun day. My youngest has medical and developmental issues, so we also have scheduled appointments three days a week that we need to work around as well as doctor appointments. It's rare that we get to just stay home all day! But this is the season of life I'm in, so I just roll with it.

 

I honestly have no issues with fitting things in to four days, but I don't think my 10yo needs a ton of scheduled coursework at this age. He does math and language arts (writing, literature, spelling) daily four days a week, and science and history alternate days. My kids go to Italian school on Saturdays. A lot of our educational stuff is unscheduled and done outside of formal "sit down school" time. We listen to educational podcasts, audiobooks and Italian radio, pick up stacks of library books every two weeks, and go for daily walks with our dog. We use Tinkercrate and Studies Weekly and do art projects.

 

My high school age kids would work from a weekly syllabus that I gave them. They often worked on math or essay assignments or lab reports on the weekends. Once they start full time dual enrollment at the community college in 11th grade, they had weekend work for their classes anyway, so I didn't feel bad expecting them to get some stuff done on the weekends in 9th and 10th grade.

 

[AFthfulJrney]

Thank you, everyone, for your responses.

 

Our co-op meets every Friday from 9-2, so I’m pretty sure I won’t do any other “school†that day other than our reading in the evening after dinner as usual. I was able to pick the classes my kids get to take, so I chose classes that wouldn’t interfere with what I was teaching at home. For example, I didn’t choose the science classes because none of them line up with what we will be studying this year and I didn’t want to overwhelm myself, or my kids. The classes I chose are Bible quizzing, PE, crochet for my daughter, cooking with Little House for my daughter, a Lego class for my son, a watercolor class for my daughter, baseball for my son, an American history class for my son, and a math games class. I basically wanted to join a co-op for the social aspect of it. Also, the nice thing about it is it starts in September, two classes of which we will be missing because of vacation, and ends at the beginning of November. So, if by then I realize it really isn’t for us, I won’t go back after Christmas. However, I know my kids are going to love it!

 

I think I’ll go ahead and spend the rest of this week going through my curriculum and fitting it into simply 4 days. I’m not real concerned with not finishing everything by years end. Our state requires 180 days, so I will work with that. I’m actually considering trying out a sabbath schedule and schooling year round. However, I’m also wanting to start back on Monday, so…I have a lot of work a head of me. I might just have to push our start day back a week.

 

Thanks again for taking the time to respond. 🙂

[EKT]

We just do four days of school per week. (Like Ellie said above, we don't try to cram that fifth day of work into the other four days somewhere! That would be nutty. The activities they do at co-op is their "school" for the day.)

 

So, we have co-op one day per week and we do Poetry Tea Time on that same day when we get home, but we don't try to do any other school at home on that day. This works out well for us. (For reference, I plan a 36-week school year.) My kids are still young, so right now the benefits of co-op outweigh the time we give up at home. That might not always be true...I can see us letting go of co-op when the girls are older and there are more conflicts with academics and other learning opportunities, etc., but for now, a 4-day week + co-op works well.

[Heidi]

I fit a full years worth of school curriculum into 36 4-day weeks. That is technically 144 days, but I would not hesitate to report it as 180 because it's the same amount of work. The coop day would definitely count as a school day anyway.

[mschickie]

Our co-op also meets all day Friday (9-2:30) so there is no school work going on during co-op season.  What I do is plan out my school year based on 4 days and I see which subjects are going to take longer than 32-36 weeks.   If that is the case then I start those subjects in August and then slowly build up to a full schedule in Sept. Sometimes I do not use an entire curriculum in one year.  Courses like grammar I might complete one book over two years.  Sometimes I just cut some things out of the curriculum, especially if they are just review and dd does not need it.  Our co-op runs two 10 weeks sessions so we do have weeks where we are home on Friday so I will do school on those days.  It all tends to work out.

[Tiramisu]

We do a four day school week without being in a co-op :-). We've found that a peaceful atmosphere/ pace is essential for success and joy in our homeschool, so we make that as much a priority as our schoolwork. What makes this work is being HOME those four days-- no grocery shopping, running errands, or extra curriculars. We save all that for day five.

Well said!!!

 

But we still make time for special outings.

 

I'm am very rigid in making sure work gets done for those four days at home.

 

I will also admit one of the four days has a lighter schedule.

[Momto6inIN]

We do a modified 4 day week. We have a very regular routine/flow to our 4 "normal" days. We don't try to cram 5 days of work into 4 days, but we don't slack those 4 days either. Maybe it's the curriculum I use or maybe it's how I tweak it, but we've never had trouble getting through it all in a year.

 

We don't do co-op on the 5th day, but we do attend some type of weekly club. On Friday mornings we all do math, then the youngers do fun stuff like art while the high schoolers do some miscellaneous assignments that only happen weekly, like playing geography games or doing a vocab assignment. Then in the afternoon we all go to either speech and debate, drama, or PE, depending on the week. And since I'm in town anyway (we live 30 miles from the nearest "big" city where the clubs meet) we do our shopping then too.

 

It makes for a relaxing week and a good intro to the weekend. :)

[2_girls_mommy]

One thing that i have always done since we started co-op is to work through the month of August.  We start the first week of August and do 5 days a week as much as possible.  Co-op never starts until Sept, so that gives us a good jump start to the year.

 

We do use co-op for a couple of core classes (science and latin,) so we use the month of August for review from the previous year to get ready for the new material.

 

Like others, we don't aim to do 5 days of work in the 4 days.  My kids do 4 days of math and other core subjects.  We do a year round school year, so we easily hit our 180 days or more.C0=op counts in the 180 days too though.  Those are full school days.