Year Round School

[dovrar]

Does anyone do year round school? I want to try it, but am looking for some suggestions as to how to plan a typical week/quarter. Do you think it is reasonable to try and do just a half day of school most of the year?

 

Thanks,

Debbie

[Lara in Colo]

We're going to try it this year. My children are used to it from PS. They started in July and did a 9wk/3wk schedule. After this year I'm thinking a 3wk/1wk schedule will suit us. We will start July5th, and do 5 days a week/3 hours a day (I don't let my children outside in the hottest part of the day anyway- so 1-4pm should might as well be used for school. We will do this July & August, I'm trying to make this time be a review/catch up/get ahead time. I'm sort of starting late on the HSing thing so my children have to catch up on latin and history, and I'd like to get more mastery of math. So July & Aug we'll only so 3 subjects (there is room for modification of course). We'll take two weeks off and start full time/full subjects in Sept. and go the 3/1 week schedule. This should align us for T-Day week off, and a 2 week Christmas break. (I haven't seen the schedule for a while so I could be off a little). I'm still working on the format of subjects as to where one subjects ends and try to make it happen around a break. DD doesn't like to break up subjects in the middle, (ie: stop history after an hour and move to science for an hour) so I'm really thinking of doing core in the Am and spending the afternoon doing an extended subject and rotating the extended subject every week. Example: am= LA, latin, history, science, afternoon =Math

(learn fractions, work on them for a week) . Week two---LA, math worksheets review of fractions, latin, science--then do a history subject in the afternoon, third week switch history for science and do a more specific unit of history in the am, same topic----for instance 1 week of Mayans and Incas in the afternoon, but when I switch, one morning history could be a compare contrast of the governments of these two cultures.

 

sorry I wrote a book---I hope you understood --I'm still working this out in my head.

 

Lara

[Guest janainaz]

We do 3 weeks on and 1 off year round. We take an extra week in December. We also do a 4-day week, the 5th day is reserved for extra library reading, trips to the library and tests.

 

I love the schedule and I never feel burned out.

[TravelingChris]

We do school most of the year and most days are full day for the children once they are in jr. high. My kids didn't mind or don't mind and in fact, for some, it is very reassuring.

[Ann@thebeach]

We do school year round. We typically only do about 2hrs per day (all year) of book work such as the 3Rs, geography and history or science though.

This time doesn't include reading, read alouds, and co-op classes. We obviously do not abide by a typical "classical" schedule. We don't do latin or foreign language or any formal logic at this stage.

 

Not sure what you mean by "half day year round"-do you really do a whole day of school work-like 6 hrs? If that's the case, then yes-3 hrs year round is very doable IMO.

 

In the summer we do a lot more science than any other time of year because we do a lot of nature/animal.experiement type learning. Dad does science "lessons" in the summer too. Otherwise we stick with math, reading, and some writing in the summer to keep up on skills-about an hour a day.

 

You have to do what works for you and your kids. We school year round because we tend to travel a fair amt so we take week long breaks more often

than most school breaks. It all evens out for us going all year.

[Closeacademy]

We've been doing year-round school from the beginning. We do a 4-day week with Friday's free for playgroup and errands. We are usually done with all of our work by lunch which leaves the afternoons free for other things.

 

We do light school November and December and finish up a lot of topics and such. And we take 2-4 weeks off in May. This year we did do a spring break. And a lot of times we take the week off when there is a Monday holiday.:001_smile:

[Mama Anna]

We're doing year-round this year, sort of. We did it last year, too.

 

I've got 1 1/2 students (Dd3.5 just began a "keep-her-busy" preschool program this winter) who are on the young side, so that is my perspective.

 

First of all, doing only half-days might be difficult due to state requirements. For instance, some places require 180 days of school. If you do 360 half days, you lose most of your weekends. Our state (MO) requires 1000 hours, although we're not keeping track yet because we're still underage. At four hours a day (8 to noon), 5 days a week, that's what - 50 weeks? That's still only two off. Your state might be totally different, but it's just something to think about.

 

What I theoretically like about year-round schooling is that we take blocks of time (last year they were 4 week blocks, this year 5 week blocks) for school and then take a week off. Everyone else is still in school and we get to just relax, kick back, etc. (Yeah, right! It usually ends up being a bit of a marathon to get stuff done that I didn't manage to do while schooling with a preschooler and an infant.) I'm hoping to get up to 6 week blocks at some point in the future. We still take about 4 contiguous weeks off in the summer so I can plan and prep for the next year.

 

The downside is that major schedule disruptors (read "new baby arriving") can blast the whole thing to smithereens. We had almost no break last summer because I suddenly realized that we'd have to begin this year early in order to give us time off to adjust after dd #3 came in September. I'm hoping part of my sense that I'm running uphill with my tongue hanging out and 10 or 11 weeks still to go is due to that. And that it'll be better next year. :001_huh:

 

For planning, I plan out the entire year at one time. I plan 40 calendar weeks as school weeks in order to give us flexibility. I take into account dh's school breaks, holidays, etc. and keep the dates pretty flexible. Then I break up the curriculum into about 36 weeks' worth of material and plot each subject out separately. I try to have all texts, etc. that I'll need before the year begins and know where I'm going to get the small stuff just before it's needed. After we've completed each week, I spend 1 1/2 hours or so planning out the next week, taking into account doctor's appointments, etc. to make sure the workload is manageable. (Dd6 is only doing first-second grade work, so this is more for my sanity than hers - she's only schooling for about 3 hours a day right now, max.) When a break is coming, I still plan the following week of school right after the last one is over so that during that break I can be totally "School-free." Oh, and I usually reserve library books for history, science, or assigned reading two weeks in advance so that there's some flex time if it's late.

 

Does any of that help?

 

Mama Anna

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

We did last year and we did 3weeks on and 1 week off, and I think that still left us 3 extra weeks to take off when we wanted. However, that drove my husband nuts, so this year we are attempting to be done (with most) subjects in June, but we use the summer for review and make up. We do math all year long, and this year we will do alot in the summer but not count it as school, I dont know. We will see how this all works out!

 

My dc are excited to do botany this summer together, but that was by their request! :D

[TXMary2]

We school year round and our year runs from August to July. We take off Thanksgiving (2 days), Christmas (2-3 weeks), Spring Break and any other day we need to. We use curriculum/do lesson plans for 180 days of the year and basically give ourselves 365 to complete that so we aren't rushed to finish a book by the end of May. Year round is much more relaxed and stress free than when we tried to follow a school year. If we want to do 3 field trips in one month it is no big deal because we wil likely not go on any the next month. The flexibility is freedom for us.

[Oak Knoll Mom]

Does anyone do year round school? I want to try it, but am looking for some suggestions as to how to plan a typical week/quarter. Do you think it is reasonable to try and do just a half day of school most of the year?

 

Thanks,

Debbie

 

I did year round when my kids were really little with no set schedule. We did school and took breaks when we felt like it. The problem was that I felt guilty when we would take a break b/c I never felt like I knew how much we were accomplishing and how far we had to go. I was so envious of the mom who would say things like, "We only have five weeks left until we're done with school for the year." I guess you could say I was jealous of my friends who had set schedules and long summers. So, last May 29th I declared school over for the year and took the whole summer off. It was wonderful. I started school back just before Labor Day.

 

However...I missed those little breaks throughout the year that I would take to catch my breath, get caught up on things, go on little trips and the kids started getting board after several weeks off. This coming year I'm going back to year-round, but I'm doing it with a plan and a set calendar. We're ending school on May 26th and taking off about six weeks. We'll start school back up in July and do a 9 weeks on, three weeks off schedule similar to the year-round elementary school in my area. We'll end up with four weeks off at Christmas and a spring break during the middle of our fourth quarter. I plan to schedule out a quarter at a time using a form I found on donnayoung.org.

[Renthead Mommy]

We go year as of this year, but we can't do things on a 3 weeks on/1 week off type schedule. First off, I never know when we're going to need that "week off". Somebody could come to visit (we were overseas for 2 years and are still playing catch up) or we could decide to take a trip. I can't so I can't say "in two weeks we're 'off'." Plus I wouldn't know what to do with us for a whole week off. We'd be sitting around staring at each other some days. I can't plan that way.

 

We started this year (2nd) on a yearly schedule because when I bought everything, I was still overseas and I had it sent to my FIL's. For the first month we had our suitcases we traveled with, some borrowed furniture and school books. It was hot and we didn't know anyone yet. So we started school for something to do.

 

We are supposed to do 180 days/ 900 hours. Which breaks down to 45 days a quarter. We just entered our 4th quarter April 1. I counted up our days and technically, we only needed 20 more days and we'd hit our 180.

 

I don't plan out and say "Week 7 we should be on lesson 10". Basically we 'do the next thing/page". We finished off spelling, FLL, ETC and Handwriting last week. We are kind of far behind in Science. We already moved on to the next level of math. We're just right in History. We'll probably speed up on the history. Once that is out of the way we'll focus more and finish up on the science.

 

We also take a lot of field trips. There are classes, farm trips, museums, Broadway shows. Of thouse 20 days we have left, 7 of them will be spent in DC.

 

We do plenty of stuff. We get it all done. We are not a slave to the schedule. I like the freedom we have, especially for living here, with him at this age. When he gets older, we'll need to have more of a schedule, but for now, at this location, it works well.

[Night Elf]

It will totally depend on your lifestyle. I'm a laid back, go with the flow type of person. Strict schedules make my teeth ache. :D

 

The only schedule I have is the list of classes we do outside the home. We're bound by their parameters. For the rest of our homeschooling, we do what we want to do when we want to do it. We have weeks where we school only two days, and other weeks we work every day. We never have a long day. The kids don't have more than 2 hours of work on any given day. I, on the other hand, can work from 2 to 5 hours a day depending on who needs help with what. Today, for example, I had to work with all 3 children and I'm still not finished. It's 8:30pm and I still need to do algebra with ds13, social studies and math with dd11, and make my dd17 sit at the table to work on vocabulary words due in her grammar/composition course. These busy days are fine because they aren't every day.

 

This type of lifestyle appeals to us. One of the reasons I don't like my children being in public school is because the hurry, hurry pace and the long dull summer. For us, taking natural breaks throughout our year feels much better than waiting for a circled date on the calendar. I like flexibility. :)

[swellmomma]

We are going to try it this year due to such a crazy year and not as much as I wanted to do getting done. While my school board considers our school year to be from September to June, I am counting it from July to June. So we will be starting our new school year July 2nd. Though for the first few months it will look just like this schoolyear while we finish up with some stuff.

[IsabelC]

I love year round 'school' because it seem to work really well for us. However, we are Classical Lite (or unschooly classical, or relaxed eclectic with classical leaning, or whatever you want to call it). I wouldn't want to be going all year without a break if we did the fully WTM monty.

[hsmamainva]

We started year-round school about a year and a half ago.

 

In fact, we just started a new school year yesterday!

 

I roughly schedule like this: 1 week off for Spring Break, every other week off during the summer (mid-June through the end of August), 1 week off at Thanksgiving, and 2 weeks off at Christmas.

 

We also take 1 week off for our family vacation, but that varies. This year, our family vacation is in May; next year, it's in February.

 

We still put in the same number of hours each day. That hasn't changed. But we have the flexibility to take a day off here and there without throwing the schedule out of whack, and that's my favorite part of year round school! For example, we had a very snowy winter and my youngest was home from school for 3 straight weeks! We just picked up where we left off when she returned to school.

 

We're due to wrap up this "school year" by the end of March 2011.

[mom4him]

We school year around. We take a break of 3-4 wks in July/Aug, a week at Thanksgiving, 2-3 wks for Christmas, and close to a week at Easter. I also don't feel bad about taking a day here or there if we have Dr appointments or company coming.

We do Math, LA and this year Reading everyday that is considered school and it is 5 days a week. Science and Social Studies we do 3-4 days a week. I try to get in 4 days but it seems that many weeks it is just 3.

With Math, LA and Reading we are doing some catchup with as we changed curr after Christmas and I started them a level behind. With Math and LA we don't start our summer break until that years books are completed. The rest we are just going to start up where we left off and go.

I love schooling this way. I agree with another poster that said she didn't get burned out. I have found this to be true. It seemed like when we were taking the summer off I always felt like I was behind all year long and didn't feel the freedom to take a day when we needed even when we HAD to. It seemed like I felt guilty for every day we took off. I now try to really watch that I don't get to relaxed with it but we take a day when we need or really want.

I know it works for some and not others. The catch is how happy you and your dc will be being in school when others are not. It isn't a problem with us but........