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Do you school year round?


MrsMe
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Do you have a schedule to post? We're doing a 4 day week, since we do (sigh) co-op.

 

What I need is a break before summer, so by summer I don't feel like I'm desperate to be off all summer:001_huh:

 

Does anyone just take a two weeks off every now and then? The 3 on, 1 off won't work with a 4-day schedule.

 

I need ideas.

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My dh is a public school teacher and we follow his schedule. It's not what I call year round, but I really like it.

 

We start the first of August and go until the end of May. We take a week off in October, the whole week of Thanksgiving, 2.5 weeks at Christmas, a week in February, and a week in April. If I'm diligent in getting the work done and some field trips we can usually take extra days off besides those.

 

We do a co-op, but not the entire year, so we have many 4 day weeks. Of course there's always parties, field trips, etc., that turn it into a 4 day week. One thing I did to help us out was to have the kids just do a little math and grammar over the summer. They only did it 2-3 times per week, but it definitely gave relief over the school year. I will do it again this summer.

 

Is your co-op enrichment or part of your academics? Doesn't it count as an actual school day? I count our kids. They usually come home and do just enough school work to count it as a whole day, such as some reading adn history. I work the rest of the curriculum so that they finish a whole week's worth in the other 4 days, thus getting 5 days of actual school on my attendance record for the state.

 

If you need time off, you should take it. Better to take off now than continue and be burned out completely.

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You can take a break whenever you want!

 

We're going to take a break next week. We've schooled for 6 weeks, and now it's time to clean the house for a week. Then we'll do another 6 weeks or so. This worked out well this time because we finished a math book last week and are finishing a level of spelling today. So we're waiting until are our break to start the new books. I will also plan out and prepare for the next 6 weeks.

 

We plan to continue through the summer, and we tend to have little to nothing on Fridays, so it's essentially a 4 day week. We aren't in a co-op. I've purposely avoided that this year!

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We have schooled year round since the beginning. We have a 4-day work week with Fridays reserved for playgroup. Our schedule looks like this:

 

January to April--school every week except 1 week is a floater to take off if needed or added to May vacation

 

May--2 to 4 weeks off, vacation, reasses schooling, yearly reports, etc.

 

June to August--1-2 weeks off for 4th of July and/or 4-H fair

 

September to November--Labor Day week and Thanksgiving week are off we work the rest of the weeks inbetween

 

December--Starts the week after Thanksgiving and we work for 2-3 weeks before taking the rest of the year off.

 

Hope this helps.:001_smile:

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Thanks closeacademy for the schedule. I need a schedule.:001_huh:

 

So it looks like most of you aren't anal like I am.:tongue_smilie: I feel like if I don't have some sort of a schedule, I'll end up at the end of the year, going "ARRRRGGGHH!!"

 

We take off for co-op and take off for "neighbor day" where our neighborhood Hs-er get together every other week. That week, along w/co-op really puts a damper on schoolwork. It's at 1pm, but we're not early-rising people.

 

Then I have this fear that summer will come and I'll chuck it. I used to go by the ps schedule, since dd had a friend in ps. But I think she's become an old 10yr old, instead of a regular 10 yr old :glare: and no longer wants to play. But I used to always get interrupted by phone calls from her early out days and all the rest of the vacation days and now no longer need to have that schedule.

 

I just feel like I'm always playing catch-up. If we have a full week, I find there's a dr's appt stuck in there. It's always something.

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Every year is different. This year we worked until the end of Nov. and then took a month off for Christmas. We are back at it until April then we will take time off. I'm not sure if we will take a month off or just a few weeks. Then we will take a month off in July and head back at'er in Aug. I like taking big chunks off during the year so I think we will do this again for next year. :001_smile:

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We've done it differently at different times but our current schedule (and it has been similar for a couple of years now) is 6 weeks on, one week off. We take 2 weeks off at the end of August because that is when my MIL usually comes to visit us from England. We also run our years from February to November. We start our "new school year" next week and we will finish the week after Thanksgiving. We take off the months of December and January with no formal lessons but plenty of unschooly informal lessons.

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So it looks like most of you aren't anal like I am.:tongue_smilie: I feel like if I don't have some sort of a schedule, I'll end up at the end of the year, going "ARRRRGGGHH!!"

 

:lol: I *did* make a schedule sort of at the beginning of the year, but I already changed it. :D I was planning to go 9 weeks and then take a week off. I decided a couple weeks ago that I needed to take a break sooner to get some major cleaning done around the house, so I changed the schedule. We're still easily getting our 36+ weeks in, so it's all good. Plus we started in the middle of the year, so I already have some subjects going into the next year anyway. For example, the school year here starts in early August, and we'll probably finish WWE1 and our history around mid-September. Our math got finished up last week, so we're starting that new and will probably finish that level around November or December. So things are all over the place. There is no one "start here... end here" set of dates for our curriculum. I've had to just live with that because we started in January halfway through a grade level, and we'd already been doing math and were kind of accelerating it anyway, but other stuff was starting at the beginning. So we're just all over the place. It's ok. I've had to learn to LET.IT.GO. :D

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We school year round by doing the equivilent of 2 weeks during June, July, and August, and then a fairly "regular" schedule during the rest of the year. We take a week off for Thanksgiving, 2 for Christmas, and at least 1 in March or April. If we need any other breaks, we take 'em. I don't do any co-ops right now.

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We too school year round. Sometimes just basics, sometimes the whole enchilada. We are in enchilada mode right now :D!

 

We take breaks whenever we like! To the relatives in the BIG city for two days a couple of times a month. To the far away farm relatives every six months for a few days, when we get sick, when I have an important deadline (or just get distracted!!) When we are butchering a steer, going to town days....you get the idea.

 

Sometimes we school on weekends (gasp), sometimes we take breaks mid-week (gasp). Field trip to the OTHER big city for a few days midweek...taking time off to pack/unpack...

 

We are VERY flexible ;).

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This is our current schedule, and I pretty happy with it.

 

The year is divided into 4 equal quarters:

Fall: Sept-Nov

Winter: Dec-Feb

Spring: Mar-May

Summer: Jun-Aug

 

We do a light day (art & science) on Friday if we aren't (sigh) behind. For each term we do 5 weeks school followed by 1 grace week (to do any test, assessments, exams; or to catch-up; or to do some delight led learning; or for me to relax). I have a 1 week floating break in each term (hunting season, Christmas, spring break, week of my anniversary, etc.). So every 13 weeks, we do 10 weeks of full school, 2 weeks of minimal/fun schoolish stuff, and 1 week off.

 

I have planned a much lighter summer schedule: core subjects (but funner versions of some of them, like Minimus for Latin), nature study and science (every other week).

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I like to start at Labor Day & end at Memorial Day. We school four days a week. I've planned out our work roughly so we have breaks during the school year. We do roughly 34 (four-day) weeks of work during that time.

 

Then, as it gets closer to the summer, I look at how we are doing on our work. If someone is having issues with a particular issue or there is a new program that will take longer than the next "regular" school year, I schedule stuff in those areas for summer. Basically, that means we do two extra subjects for about six weeks during the summer. We take off some of June & some (all/most) of August. It should take about an hour total per kid or less.

 

Last summer, my oldest started Writing Tales & worked on math. My younger one did math & reading. This summer, we plan on doing math & latin for the older two with #3 doing learning-to-read & handwriting with sidewalk chalk outside.

 

I use the summer for planning & to work on things with which the kids need extra help.

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We've been going year-round, but last year we took several weeks off when the baby was born. This year we've had several days for Thanksgiving, a few days for vacation (but we counted some of our vacation, since we were in a national park and she was earning a Jr. Park Ranger badge), a few sick days here and there, and 2 weeks for Christmas. We started in mid-July, since that's when my sister's kids started and dd is in the same grade as 1 of them, so she wanted to be doing the same thing as her cousin. We'll be done with our required 180 days by the end of April, but we have a big move (TN to CA) coming up in the summer, so we'll just keep going until we have to move.

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