Can you all handle another year-round schooling thread? :P

[Rosy]

We started in August this year and just finished week 11. So, we're almost 1/3 of the way through the school year and aren't burned out at all. In fact, this is the best year we've had so far, schoolwise. DS is in a good place with his curriculum and is being adequately challenged without being stressed. The girls love school and have never been a problem, motivation-wise. However, we are BUSY. We're out pretty much every evening, we're busy over the weekends, and I know DD10 feels overloaded a lot of the time.

 

So I've been considering switching to year-round school and doing 3 weeks of school per month. This would enable us to complete 36 weeks per year but still take a week off every month and have 4 extra weeks per year.

 

The pros and cons as I see them:

 

PROS--better retention, a week off every month to chill and catch up on housework, 4 weeks off every 9 months isn't much for a hardworking 10-year-old (the other kids don't have anywhere near the workload), not having to get swept up in the summer craziness (constant playdates, running around, etc).

 

CONS--never getting a long break/potential burnout, being on a different schedule than our friends.

 

My thought is to stick with our normal school year until the end of May, take a couple weeks off, and then start the next school year in mid-June. That way if we decide that summer is for playing, we won't get behind.

 

Thoughts? Has anyone tried YRS and hated it? Does anyone else think that taking few breaks through out the school year is MORE stressful than frequent breaks all year?

[Night Elf]

We've always schooled year round but we've never had a schedule. We school year round because we like to take off when we want and not be tied to a schedule. We usually do school 4 days a week, but sometimes it's only 3. It's just what we've naturally gravitated towards doing.

[kalanamak]

We've always schooled year round but we've never had a schedule. We school year round because we like to take off when we want and not be tied to a schedule. We usually do school 4 days a week, but sometimes it's only 3. It's just what we've naturally gravitated towards doing.

 

We do some school nearly every day, but never over 4 hours. Sometimes just an hour. It is working for us.

[Rosy]

I like having a schedule. We have fairly short days already, and 4-day/weeks, and still manage to get everything in....but it's a whirlwind. And summer vacation always feels too long. I asked the kids what they thought of it and they all liked the idea. DD10 was asking if we can unschool on our weeks off. So I think it could work...I'm just scared of getting burned out.

[Sara in AZ]

We do three weeks on and one off. We also take off Friday's for field trips and such, although I have been adding in some work for my 3rd grader on Friday. This schedule saves my sanity. Otherwise I don't know when I would fit in doctor's appointments, etc. I always laugh when I call it our week "off", though since it's not really a week off from all our extra lessons and such and I try to keep going with history and science those weeks so as not to get too behind. We're still pretty busy, but it is nice to not feel the pressure to get school done and have some free time to just pick up and go to the zoo or something if we feel like it. (Especially since it's getting nice here in AZ.)

 

In the summer it gets a little bit tricky since friends are out of school and we have to tweak our schedule a little bit. But for us this schedule is working really well. I love knowing that every three weeks I get a break!

[....]

We school year-round and I would have it no other way. :D It's awesome. You can take a day off whenever you need to during the year. We are also very far ahead of where we should be, so if we need to stop for a while, no one gets behind/stressed.

 

Our friends took the summer off this year and she said they forgot all their math facts. That was one con to taking the summer off with little kids, I guess.

[Guest mrsjamiesouth]

I tried the 3 weeks on and 1 week off this year. We started August 2nd. I found that during the 1 week off (my 6yo especially) the boys forgot a lot of what they had learned before. I really had problems with my 6yo and phonics. I had problems with both boys and math. 1 week off with weekends is 11 days of no school.

So, we are back to normal days. I don't take off for most Holidays, we will just end our year sooner.

[Mom0012]

We school year-round, but do a much lighter load over the summer. For the summer, we just continue on with math, reading and maybe some grammar. We haven't suffered burnout and I find by continuously working on math and having the kids read, they make good progress and we are able to take more breaks during the school year.

 

I have tried the every 4th week off but found that too choppy. Also, there is always an adjustment when we return to doing schoolwork after a week or more off and I didn't like making that adjustment so often. I find taking every 6 - 8 weeks off works a lot better for us. The other problem with every 4th week was that if something unexpected happened where we either needed or wanted to take time off, it wasn't good because we already had so many days off scheduled, but, of course, you can always make adjustments if that happens.

 

We basically start at the beginning of August and then take a break week mid-September. Then we school until the second week in November and take a break. In December, I generally cut back to our summer routine so we have time for Christmas crafts and activities (though I don't know if we'll cut back as much this year with my son getting older). We take a week off for Christmas and then it's back to taking every 6-8 weeks off again until the beginning of June, when we move to our lighter summer schedule.

 

Lisa

[GoVanGogh]

We've always schooled year round but we've never had a schedule. We school year round because we like to take off when we want and not be tied to a schedule. We usually do school 4 days a week, but sometimes it's only 3. It's just what we've naturally gravitated towards doing.

Same here.

 

CONS--never getting a long break/potential burnout, being on a different schedule than our friends.

Re: different schedule.

We don't follow the public school schedule at all, including their random holidays and early releases. Our ps friends know we school over the summer and it has never been a big issue. We have more of a problem with things like Columbus Day, half days and snow days. One neighbor, in particular, wants badly to have me be her babysitter on such days, even though I have told her a zillion times we don't follow the ps schedule. :glare:

Out of our dozen or so homeschool friends, everyone follows their own schedule! We all know and appreciate that we homeschool for the flexibility and work around it.

[Whereneverever]

We YRS, but the school year is a little different then the summer. Summer we focus on unit studies/language, school year is more typical.

[Ellie]

We did year-round, but with a different schedule than yours.

 

We took off from Thanksgiving to about the middle of January--what a relief to not have to worry about school stuff during the holidays!

 

We took off a couple of weeks in the spring around Easter, a couple of weeks in later August/early September (southern California can be stinkin' hot that time of year), and any other random days as necessary (such as a trip to Disneyland in the middle of the week in March when school is in session).

 

Otherwise we just kept working on stuff.

[kalanamak]

I like having a schedule. We have fairly short days already, and 4-day/weeks, and still manage to get everything in....but it's a whirlwind. And summer vacation always feels too long. I asked the kids what they thought of it and they all liked the idea. DD10 was asking if we can unschool on our weeks off. So I think it could work...I'm just scared of getting burned out.

 

 

Well, I think you should look into your (and your children's) "style". Are you a person who looks forward to holidays? I don't. I prefer to "slow and steady" it and have each day less of a cram. My boy really needs vigorous exercise, or he is distracted and wiggly (as I was, as a child). I find the short but frequent lessons simply work best of us, and suspect many children would do better with this regime. Our public school schedule reflects the world of farming and no A/C.

 

Plus, if it isn't working, no one will put you on the rack for switching back.:001_smile:

[G5052]

We've never had a formal plan, and it has changed as they've gotten older, but we have always homeschooled year-round.

 

Now that they're in paid classes, follow that schedule and use the remaining time to work on areas of weakness, pre-read the literature selections, etc. So the "off season" is considerably lighter.

[Coffeetime]

This is our first year of doing 3 wks on 1 wk off. So far it's been the BEST school year we've ever had! Usually by now I've had at least one total burn-out episode (complete with sobbing "why am I doing this, again?") :tongue_smilie:but having that week off each month has been so great. I get a week to recover, catch up on housework, make dr. appointments, do major monthly grocery shopping etc.

The kids love it, too. My oldest does especially well with short term goals. Thus far they haven't had any problems with retention. It's probably the best homeschooling decision I've ever made!

[Rosy]

Well, I think you should look into your (and your children's) "style". Are you a person who looks forward to holidays? I don't. I prefer to "slow and steady" it and have each day less of a cram. My boy really needs vigorous exercise, or he is distracted and wiggly (as I was, as a child). I find the short but frequent lessons simply work best of us, and suspect many children would do better with this regime. Our public school schedule reflects the world of farming and no A/C.

 

Plus, if it isn't working, no one will put you on the rack for switching back.:001_smile:

I like holidays, but I don't tend to take a lot of time off for them. Maybe an extra day or so, and when DH is off between Christmas and New Years' we don't school. But it seems like YRS would allow us to adjust our schedule for holidays when we need to?

 

This is our first year of doing 3 wks on 1 wk off. So far it's been the BEST school year we've ever had! Usually by now I've had at least one total burn-out episode (complete with sobbing "why am I doing this, again?") :tongue_smilie:but having that week off each month has been so great. I get a week to recover, catch up on housework, make dr. appointments, do major monthly grocery shopping etc.

The kids love it, too. My oldest does especially well with short term goals. Thus far they haven't had any problems with retention. It's probably the best homeschooling decision I've ever made!

 

That's another thing I was thinking about--it seems like if we have more than a couple outside commitments on any given week it completely throws us off. And also, I've been wanting to resume once-a-month-cooking and that could be one of our "week off" projects.

 

I understand the issues people have mentioned with a week off being hard to recover from...I'll take that into consideration. :)

[Halcyon]

We school year-round, but lighter in August. We don't really follow a schedule, but we're ahead academically so if we want to take a few days off here and there, or if I feel I need a day to organize our homeschool stuff, I take it.

[Carrie12345]

We did 2 weeks in July and 2 weeks in August this year, so we can take time off when the baby comes. The kids were NOT happy about it, even though I did my best to keep it light.

 

This is ds's second year home, and I haven't been able to *completely deprogram him yet. He rubs off on his sisters.