cara Posted December 15, 2009 Share Posted December 15, 2009 I was thinking about starting our schedule in January and doing a Jan-Dec schedule vs an August to May/June schedule. I've been feeling my way the last few months and stumbling so its not like we are even remotely halfway through any of our textbooks. Does anyone do this? How does it work for you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deb in NZ Posted December 15, 2009 Share Posted December 15, 2009 but the PS year here is Feb-Dec. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelaNYC Posted December 15, 2009 Share Posted December 15, 2009 I try not to follow the ps calendar (which is hard since I have one - soon 2 - in ps). I'm leaning more toward year-round with April, August, and December off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoVanGogh Posted December 15, 2009 Share Posted December 15, 2009 I run our school years from Jan-Dec. DS is a Christmas baby and we school year-round. It just made more sense to me to go by age, starting fresh in January, and not following the public school calendar. We did start homeschooling using the traditional school year but :tongue_smilie: It was so arbitrary when to start and where to end. I am so glad that we switched. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cara Posted December 15, 2009 Author Share Posted December 15, 2009 I run our school years from Jan-Dec.DS is a Christmas baby and we school year-round. It just made more sense to me to go by age, starting fresh in January, and not following the public school calendar. We did start homeschooling using the traditional school year but :tongue_smilie: It was so arbitrary when to start and where to end. I am so glad that we switched. DS is a New Year's Baby so that was part of my thinking also. How did you make the switch to that vs the PS schedule. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted December 15, 2009 Share Posted December 15, 2009 I was thinking about starting our schedule in January and doing a Jan-Dec schedule vs an August to May/June schedule. I've been feeling my way the last few months and stumbling so its not like we are even remotely halfway through any of our textbooks. Does anyone do this? How does it work for you? We had a big move about a year ago, leaving one home in October and not settling in the new one until Jan. I had planned on that year being a Jan - Dec school year. We did this and it worked out ok. We finished up our core history work at the beginning of December. Lessons learned: It was harder to be out of sync with the world than I expected. Part of this is because we left Hawaii, which has year round school and non-traditional seasons and moved to Japan, where the school year drives a lot of the youth activities. I found that my school schedule was competing with summer camp, summer sports and the period when other kids were out of school and looking to play. We did push through and I'm taking a few weeks off for Christmas and starting again in January. But I'll try to push harder through the spring so that I can do half days over the summer time when we have busy schedules again. I also found that it left me a bit out of sync with online comrades. For example, we're using Sonlight and we were rarely studying the same section of the core as other families on the Sonlight forums. We did Jan-Dec because we really didn't do much academic work during our transition months. If it were just an issue of not being done with text books, I might say that it wasn't worth changing how you view your school year, just your work scheduling. We have frequently finished up a text midyear and immediately started up the next volume. In fact doing this in math in the early years was one reason that we were able to get ahead in our math work. You might consider just keeping on, taking a little shorter summer break or doing half day school over the summer and continuing on in the fall where you left off. Then as soon as you finish, start the next level. Good luck on whatever you choose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoVanGogh Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 DS is a New Year's Baby so that was part of my thinking also. How did you make the switch to that vs the PS schedule. DS normally makes developmental leaps around his birthday. The year we switched was a very large leap. :tongue_smilie: He needed harder work. And I was rethinking how we were doing "school." It just seemed like a good time to switch gears.I don't really know "how" we switched. Just looked through our books, tossed what was too young, added in some harder stuff and went from there. We are in a low-reg state so I didn't have to worry about recording. (I do record, for my own records. The year we switched was just 'short' on days.) I will admit it is a bit odd, but I do know several people that record from Jan-Dec - all the children have end of the year birthdays. We do many classes outside the home and I just record (again, for my own records) that DS took a class from Sept-Dec one year and Jan-May the next, or however the dates fall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Mungo Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 I would not do this with older kids. When you test them they are tested based on how far into the traditional school year they are being tested. So, if you test them in May they are compared with other kids tested in May. If most kids are at the end of the year and your kids are in the middle of year it could be a distinct disadvantage as far as that goes. It doesn't matter much with younger kids but it matters when it comes to things like Algebra. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa in Australia Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 but the PS year here is Feb-Dec. ;) The school system starts in January to December here in Australia as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Admitedly it's now been two years since we tested, but I don't think this is that big of a wrinkle. If I remember correctly, you have to indicate how many months of a grade the student has had. When our group tested we had families with start dates across a spectrum, so some were 4th grade 9 months, some were 4th grade 7 months, etc. And none of the families matched precisely with Hawaii's year round schedule. If I were going to try to stick with a Jan-Dec schedule, then I would have no problem with saying that they were at 4th grade and 5 months in May. On the other hand, I might also just choose to test in the fall (when BJU has discounts anyway) and consider that toward the end of my school year. On the other hand, it might have some bigger repercussions once you hit high school and have an inflexible schedule of PSAT, SAT and AP dates. I remember having to take SAT 2 subject tests after only a few months in physics and chemistry (as a public school student) and it was no fun. Plus you will either run into having a semester extra or running a semester late in comparison to public schooled students applying to college. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meet me in paris Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Admitedly it's now been two years since we tested, but I don't think this is that big of a wrinkle. If I remember correctly, you have to indicate how many months of a grade the student has had. When our group tested we had families with start dates across a spectrum, so some were 4th grade 9 months, some were 4th grade 7 months, etc. And none of the families matched precisely with Hawaii's year round schedule. :iagree: That's how we've always done it. I wouldn't let test schedules affect my decision. I have one with a late Sept b-day and I keep thinking that we may "graduate" to the next grade in Jan rather than waiting til the next fall. She always seems to be ready to take on harder work by January rather than after a long summer break. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 :iagree: That's how we've always done it. I wouldn't let test schedules affect my decision. I have one with a late Sept b-day and I keep thinking that we may "graduate" to the next grade in Jan rather than waiting til the next fall. She always seems to be ready to take on harder work by January rather than after a long summer break. I will also say that I think that the world's grade designations are next to useless to me as a homeschooler. It doesn't reflect the level that my kids are working on any more than their shoe size does. For example, my strongest reader and most challenging student is in 5th grade doing middle school work. But if he were starting school here now, he would have had to wait an extra year before starting kindergarten. That would have been a disaster as it would have left him incredibly bored or even more differentiated from his peers. I guess what I was trying to say in my posts above is that while we have a school schedule that rotates on a Jan - Dec basis (at least for the moment), that doesn't dictate our curriculum choices or status any more than the Sep-Jun schedule did in years past. If I had not finished up with our Sonlight Core by December, I wouldn't have skipped ahead to the next one. And when we finished a math text in the spring we went right into the next level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amber in AUS Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 I start DD's year in July, because that is when her birthday is and DS's year in January as per his birthday, we school year round. Our official (Australian) school year begins in Feb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lionfamily1999 Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 I run our school years from Jan-Dec.DS is a Christmas baby and we school year-round. It just made more sense to me to go by age, starting fresh in January, and not following the public school calendar. We did start homeschooling using the traditional school year but :tongue_smilie: It was so arbitrary when to start and where to end. I am so glad that we switched. We go by ds's birthday too, but that makes his school year run June to May. We hs year round, taking our biggest break in July (three weeks). For younger ds, his year will be September to August. They both match the regular school calendar pretty well, lol, but not by design. I would not do this with older kids. When you test them they are tested based on how far into the traditional school year they are being tested. So, if you test them in May they are compared with other kids tested in May. If most kids are at the end of the year and your kids are in the middle of year it could be a distinct disadvantage as far as that goes. It doesn't matter much with younger kids but it matters when it comes to things like Algebra. Ds's May is the ps kids' June, iykwIm. I think it could be to their advantage if they were a few months ahead (rather than behind). Of course, reviewing that first sentence I typed, I do think it could make for some confusion ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cara Posted December 16, 2009 Author Share Posted December 16, 2009 I'm not worried about testing, we don't have to test and he's working a grade level ahead of PS anyway. I've decided to go ahead and try it. With DH's job he gets more time off between Thanksgiving and New Years then he does in the summer, that's one plus. Plus it is really hot here in July and August and we don't do much of anything except the kids driving me crazy. I figured it out, we are going to do 6 weeks periods with a week off between periods with 6 weeks off from Thanksgiving to DS's birthday (Jan 4). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 The school system starts in January to December here in Australia as well. The only sensible way to run things ;) Rosie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kirch Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 We do January-December year-round here too, just because ds was ready to start the K curriculum I had for him in January at 4 1/2. The only downside so far has been that most of the homeschool conventions around here are in May or June, and although I might be looking at different curriculum choices, I'm not ready to buy anything at that point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 We did. We started around the middle of January, took off a couple of weeks in the spring around Easter, a couple of weeks in late August/early September, Thanksgiving through the middle of January, and other random times during the year. :-) To make Sunday school teachers and grandparents happy, we "promoted" in September; otherwise, we just kept working on things until we finished or got tired of them, then moved on to the next thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keptwoman Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 The only sensible way to run things ;) Rosie Sing it sista :w00t: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgilli3 Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 We school Jan - Dec too. We are Australian, but currently living in the UAE, where the school year (generally) runs July- June. We still follow the Australian school calendar as during summer here, it is very, very ( have I said very:D) hot. This is when the main break occurs. As it is too hot to do anything, we continue with school, sitting in an air conditioned room...lol. When the weather cools here ( this time of the year), we take this time off, so the kids can run around and enjoy the more pleasant weather. As we plan to return to Australia ( and possibly the school system) later next year, following their Jan- Dec system suits us perfectly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Closeacademy Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Sort-of. We just school year round. I have one child who usually moves up in January and another that moves up in June. As far as working out for us--I've just learned to go with the flow and not stress out too much any more about timetables and curriculum.:001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.