Ques for those who have implemented a 4 day school week....

[GVD22]

I'm thinking this is what I want to do this year but I'm just wondering about falling behind(especially with math). What were the pros and cons for your family in going to a 4 day school week? Did you just do more work during the other 4 days to make up for missing a day?:)

Edited August 22, 2009 by GVD22

[Closeacademy]

We do school year round. So we get in 180 plus days. We don't follow the school system's schedule but we take a few weeks off for summer and in December.:001_smile:

[GVD22]

We do school year round. So we get in 180 plus days. We don't follow the school system's schedule but we take a few weeks off for summer and in December.:001_smile:

 

So you do a "normal" workload for 4 days and take the 5th day off?

[lovinmomma]

We will be doing 4 day a week, but we also school year round, so we get in more than enough days to complete all of the math and LA. However, I know that some people continue JUST math during their breaks, so that the children don't forget during summer. They also may do a reduced schedule of math only a couple of days a week.

[phathui5]

We are moving to a four day schedule for planned lessons. We'll have a field trip every Friday, so that'll be educational, even though it's not bookwork.

 

We're going year round with four weeks off (Christmas, summer camp, 2 planning weeks), so we'll have 192 days of bookwork.

[twogirlsmommy]

We have always done a 4 day school week, sometimes 3 if we do an extra field trip. DD 8 is going into 3rd grade. We are right on schedule with math, she is ahead in all language arts things. It seems that I tend to not do as many projects as I would like, but DD has the option and she typically doesn't want to do them. We take off 3-4 weeks at Christmas, 3-4 weeks around April, and a bunch of time in the summer.

 

We do not do all things all days, 1 day science, 2 days history, 3 FLL, 1 day art and music...it works for us and I wouldn't change a thing. We school M, W (afternoon), Th, Fri. I work at the church on Tuesdays for 1/2 day and then we do our library day. Wed AM we are doing CBS (Bible Study) and two Wed PM's DD is horseback riding. Other Wed PM's we will have school. Fridays are our field trip coop which meets once a month. The other days we do school. I love doing school at the most 3 days in a row. We do so much in a day that 3 days in a row is about all we can handle :).

 

We do not do a set number of days or hours, because it is not required by our state. I love this flexibility. :)

[GVD22]

It seems as though it will work based on what you guys have shared, especially since we continue an abbreviated math schedule in the summer.:)

[workingmom]

ds is in 3rd and its working really well. he's a head in everything and since we school essentially year round we get more than enough done. in the summer we still do light math and writing just to keep the skills up but at least last year were done with the "book".

 

some weeks we do 3 days of the core stuff and then 3 very light days done in about an hour.

 

i think it really depends on your kid and you.

[PeterPan]

You can still do math on the 5th day and have it be an off/fun day, because math doesn't take very long. You can use that 5th day to do drill and games, not letting it go to waste, or just do a regular lesson. When dd was young we did 4 days a week, and into about 3rd gr that was fine to be flexible like that. By 4th grade we really started needing the 5. But like I said, that 5th day could be alternate stuff. Just with an older dc I wouldn't skip it entirely, even if the entire rest of the day is given to cleaning or fieldtrips or whatever. I'd still do math.

[Jill- OK]

...and at three weeks in, I'm loving it.

 

Now, essentially, "our" school is three days a week, because my kids are at co-op the first day, but they're taking two core subjects there (Biology and Geometry), and doing their music lessons on that day, too, so I count it as school.

 

We've always schooled year 'round, and when I sat down to figure out our schedule, and counted up days...we'll still be able to take reasonable breaks, doing it this way. (A week or so, here and there, and a more substantial break in the summer.)

 

I need that extra day (Friday) to catch up on housework (that's not happened so far, though, lol), and while we don't have a sit-down school work time, my older kids (high schoolers) and I can have a chance to really discuss some of their work from the week, in more depth, and we can make a plan for the next week. (Monday, co-op day, is also music lesson and gymnastics day, so it's crrrrraaazzzy, and not the best time to give out assignments, etc.)

 

It's been positive so far.

[Hsmomto4]

We have always done a 4 day school week and it has worked well for us. We just do normal lessons during the week and still finish early each year. In the lower grades we do English, Spelling, math, Latin,, reading and Bible all 4 days. Then we do Science, History, Dictation/Copy work (depending on what grade), Logic, Art and Music only 2 days each week. Friday is house cleaning day and then fun stuff. We have always enjoyed it and plan on keeping this type of schedule.

[Night Elf]

We school 3 to 4 days each week, not always consistent. It's one of the benefits of homeschooling. I simply will not be held to an arbitrary scope and sequence. But then again, I live in a state where homeschoolers are not scrutinized closely by anyone. All I have to do is file an annual Intent to Homeschool form and monthly attendance records with a X in the box to show which days we did school. Georgia is a fairly easy state for homeschooling.

 

No, we do not double up on work specifically to make up for lost time. We don't have deadlines of any sort. The kids move through the materials at their own pace. Just like the natural ebb and flow of life, their education in specific core topics wanders around. Dd11 is doing super great in math right now, but has slowed down considerably in grammar. Earlier this calendar year it was the opposite. I don't like keeping up with the public schools because their educational philosophy and expectations are way different than mine. :)

[MgoBlue]

Half the time it turns into a 4 day week because we go to gym one day a week...now there's going to be art & science for a couple weeks --this is all at the local college...

This is also our library day as it's all in the same little town...we're 7 miles from the walmart in the country so we try to maximize our time there.

 

We get behind with the math sometimes & have very long days. I need to change this.

[kindermommy]

We do three to four day weeks too, but we didn't really "stop" school in June, so essentially we school year round also.

 

We also live rurally, so we spend Thursdays of each week at gymnastics, running errands, appts, Library visit, etc.

 

We belong to a homeschool group and some weeks there is some sort of activity with them that takes up a day of our school schedule, but I see it as no different than a field trip or "special event" or assembly of some sort at public school that completely wipes out or changes their day of instruction.

 

Frankly we just do the best we can and I try not to stress about it. :D We also live in Texas which I think is THE easiest state to homeschool in!

[nd293]

We school 4 days per week, but work year round, 4 weeks on, 1 week off, with a couple of extra weeks off in summer. That works to get in the required number of days for any curriculum (like Maths) which is structured for a full school year.

[GVD22]

Thanks for all your responses. This has given me much food for thought in terms of how to make this work best for my family.:)

[lulubelle]

The things we do on Friday's are read a fun book about our history from the week, finish up phonics pathway with a page, he reads me a book, some kind of story about a great artist, musician or scientist, and I try to read to them as much as they can stand me. Those are my goals for a lite day without math or language arts.

[Karen in CO]

We school 4 days a week - 172 days a year. I don't do a school lite or a fun school stuff one day a week; I just have 43, 4 day school weeks. I take a full day off from schooling during the week to relax and enjoy the kids and I don't call it school. I also don't double up or try to add in extra work during the week. We just do more weeks of school than others. We don't have long summer breaks which means we don't forget what we learned during the year. I'm not really a year-round school person, but I guess I kind of am. I just prefer to not do school on Mondays. We start the year in September and end when we hit our magic number. I keep a calendar on the fridge that has the whole year on one page and just write which number the school day is when we do school. It is easy to keep track of and we move through our work doing what is planned as next.

 

There are as many ways of doing a school week as there are families. Keep an open mind and you'll find what works for you.

[KathyBC]

You can still do math on the 5th day and have it be an off/fun day, because math doesn't take very long. You can use that 5th day to do drill and games, not letting it go to waste, or just do a regular lesson. When dd was young we did 4 days a week, and into about 3rd gr that was fine to be flexible like that. By 4th grade we really started needing the 5. But like I said, that 5th day could be alternate stuff. Just with an older dc I wouldn't skip it entirely, even if the entire rest of the day is given to cleaning or fieldtrips or whatever. I'd still do math.

 

We did our own version of this last year; four regular school days, and a fifth light day. Done on the light day were math, anything left over that wasn't done, trip to the library, art (in theory :tongue_smilie:), etc. For subjects or books that had a specific ending, we just kept going with those until they were done. So by the end of June, oldest ds was still doing a few minutes of school each day, finishing up math, German and spelling.

[Pongo]

I'm thinking this is what I want to do this year but I'm just wondering about falling behind(especially with math). What were the pros and cons for your family in going to a 4 day school week? Did you just do more work during the other 4 days to make up for missing a day?:)

 

You Avatar pic. is really funny:)

We do 4 days a week, I attached my schedule. We school full days on those 4 days.

[2_girls_mommy]

We have always done 4 day weeks. The first few years, we just did 4 days of work over the 5 days somehow. Sometimes we did everything planned in the 4 days, and had a field trip or a free day (and sometimes I used the Friday to catch up on work or to get an extra day in, especially if it was before a holiday week when I knew we were going to be taking some time off.) This year we are doing a co op on Fridays, so we will always need to do our 4 full days during our 4 days.

 

Sometimes in the past, the 5th day was a fun project day, or a day when we just did lots Story of the World activities or fun art projects. We never got behind though, because I planned the year for 4 day weeks. So we just have a longer year than a traditional school. But we still take a summer break. We school from the first Mon. in Aug. until the end of May for math, grammar, phonics, music, basically all core stuff. We get our 180 days in from Aug. to end of May doing roughly 16-17 days a mo of schoolwork. That gives us 160-170 days. The last 10-20 are field trips or the days we did projects or educational stuff that wasn't "book learning", and planning days. Of course this year, we will be counting Fridays since they will be co op days, so I will come out ahead in the end.

[GVD22]

You Avatar pic. is really funny:)

We do 4 days a week, I attached my schedule. We school full days on those 4 days.

 

That avatar always makes me smile.;) Thanks for sharing your schedule.