How many days/weeks do you school?

[DawnL]

I am wondering how many days/weeks everyone plans for. This year we are going to start in bits and pieces, as my dd is doing a beta-test for WriteShop and they are starting before we were planning on starting school.

 

I'd really like to get a flexible schedule for the year out. I don't care if we get every single thing done, but it's good to have aims and goals. I just won't want to plan too much, so that it feels like we have a huge amount of unfinished business at the end.

[Ellie]

When my dc were as young as yours, we did Official School Stuff on Monday and Tuesday; library on Wednesday; field trip on Thursday; clean house and once-a-month park day on Friday. That was our schedule year-round, although I tended to not worry about Official School Stuff from Thanksgiving to about the middle of January.

 

Of course, I wasn't doing classical/WTM, either. :D

 

Nevertheless, both of my dds began taking classes at the community college when they were 14yo, so I guess it worked for us. :D

[Mommy22alyns]

We have co-op every Monday (which counts as a school day) and then I teach 4 other days a week. Adventures is 34 weeks long, but I believe we'll still have math & grammar to work on then, so we'll just continue until we're finished.

[bleeglaser]

I'm struggling with this. We will probably be doing CC on Monday(will decide this Saturday), homeschool enrichment program on Tuesday, and school at home Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We started this week and I really don't see how I'm suppose to expect them to remember there phonics with four days off..... Evenings are out with cub scouts and soccer though. We really want to have weekends off too. We'll see. I don't have all my curriculum yet so we are just doing a little bit. Easing them with a slow start. :D

[zenjenn]

We do school 5 days a week, roughly keeping with the same schedule as public schools around here. But we learn more and have a heck of a lot more fun. :D

[Mommy2BeautifulGirls]

We're doing five days a week for 42 weeks. That is roughly 6 on/1 off with a month off in the summer. And a few days off here and there for various reasons.

[Joyofsixreboot]

Five days a week. Some days are strangely broken to make room for library and Mom's Morning Out.

[Jungle Mama]

I plan for 40 weeks of alternating weeks with 5 and 4 days ending up with 180 days. The 40 weeks line up with my dh's work dates as he works in our public school system that has 4 10 week terms.

 

Every second Friday I intend to use for catch up, project time for me or we will move on to the next day's work. I am hoping this gives us a buffer in case of illness etc. (Funny how a 5 day virus takes 2.5 weeks to get over when you have 4 kids and 2 adults in your family? lol)

 

Best wishes

Jen in Oz

Ds 12, ds 9, ds 6, ds 3

Classically eclectic

[asmall]

We have a four day school week, leaving one day for field trips, the library, or appointments. We follow our schedule for 36 weeks, taking off some vacation time during the school year and then having a break for the summer. (We still do some school in the summer, just enough so they do not forget!)

AL

[mom31257]

My dh teaches public school, so we follow their schedule. We have to do 180 days here in GA. I plan 36 weeks of 5 days a week. We start when he does, so I always have extra days to play with. We start the first of August, take about 7-8 weeks off during the year, and finish up the end of May.

 

We attend a one day a week, enrichment co-op for 8 weeks each semester. I just work around it those weeks.

[Heidi]

We school 4 days a week: M, Tu, Th, & Fr. Wednesday counts as school as well, but that is when we do the fun stuff like projects, art, & dd7 has a homeschool class on Wed. mornings.

I have 36 weeks planned for the year. We started the end of July and will end mid June. I'm taking a month off for a new baby, two weeks for Christmas, and a week after every 6 weeks.

Edited August 18, 2011 by hmsmith

[SorrelZG]

I have no set plan because I seem to have a horrid inability to keep one. I'm doing 4-5 days per week, with the intention of taking off whenever needed. Our state will require approximately 180 days/year. That won't be a problem.

[Mommee & Baba]

5 days a week. Friday is our light and "make-up" day if needed. We have things planned for Friday's but it's nothing that takes up more than an hour of our day.

 

Oh I forgot to mention how many weeks. I plan out 36 weeks, however we're ok with running a couple weeks longer if needed :) We start the end of July and stop end of April, beginning of May.

Edited August 18, 2011 by mamaofblessings

[OrdinaryTime]

My kids are still young so we only do sit-down work three days a week. We have an academic co-op on one day and and use the remaining day for field trips.

[MissKNG]

We school from September to May. And the number of days depends on the whim of my big girl (except daily Bible readings and read alouds). She is an aggressive learner and would do formal school 7 days a week, I try to keep it 4-5 days a week (for my sanity!).

[chepyl]

We do school work 5 days a week. We have co-op on Wed, but it is 9-12, so we will squeeze in our math and grammar. If we don't, we will have to continue through the semmer to finish everything.

[amyrjoy]

I wish I had changed to a year round schedule this past year. Oh well. We seem to always pull off the five day a week/ 36 week thing and we do some schooling ( math, usually) in the summer a little bit. This year, I'd like to be more flexible, but we shall see. We start Wenesday next week. Have a definite schedule as such til shortly after Thanksgiving. Maybe start Christmas break early but do some sort of Christmassy unit all December for a change of pace, one that has lots of fun stuff. . School lightly in January. Do regular scheduling for February, March, April, and May. Do hands on activities for history, art, science, etc. in June and July. Start math after a short break (June) again in July also, and keep it up.

[Hwin]

4 days/week, for 40-45 weeks (I'm only planning a month at a time).

 

M/Thurs are long days (3-4hrs) because we do SOTW those days

Wed/Sat are 1-2 hrs of math, reading, science, and crafty stuff

[2squared]

I'd really like to get a flexible schedule for the year out. I don't care if we get every single thing done, but it's good to have aims and goals. I just won't want to plan too much, so that it feels like we have a huge amount of unfinished business at the end.

 

My dc are similar ages to yours, and here is how I decided this year's schedule.

 

180 school days - 5 testing days - 5 sick days - 5 field trips days = 165 days

 

I figured out my end date and which days we would take off during the year (dh's holidays, birthdays, etc.). This gave me our starting date of Aug 1.

 

Next I determined what we were going to cover for the year. We are mostly following Mater Amabilis, so I had an outline from their plans. I took what we were going to cover divided by the available days, and I knew how often everything had to be done each week.

 

Then I made a schedule for the week. The kids each have "must-do" work for their day to be a full day, and then we have the extras that are mostly learning fun. Those are the things that I am A-OK with skipping or progressing through at a slower rate.

 

We school however many days work out for the week according to my previous calculations. I did make one day of the week a lighter load, and that day fluctuates.

 

By the end of the year, we will have completed 165 full days. It might get done quicker, and it might get done slower. But....165 days is the target.

Edited August 18, 2011 by 2squared

[Jim]

Learning occurs every day, concentrated Monday through Friday. Tues. and Wed. ds attends science classes and CC. We do additional work on Tuesday but Thursday is packed with CC's Foundations in the morning and Essentials in the afternoon.

 

So, we learn Monday through Friday. We started in line with the local school system the second week of August. We will take a month around Christmas to travel and visit family. Typically we peter out, I mean finish up mid-May.

 

This year I'd like to scale back and continue through summer, especially with math.

 

Jim

[mcconnellboys]

We do 36 weeks; 180 days....

[Dmmetler]

We follow my University teaching schedule, approximately, and I report based on a 180 day, 2 semester year, but honestly, it's more an ongoing thing-just a little more casual when there are summer camps or a lot of holiday stuff going on. Our schedule this year is full school days at home M-W-F, short day (math/LA/history) at home Tues, with co-op (varied topics-so everything from making Sushi to arts and crafts to folk dancing) and dance class, short day (math/LA/History) on Thursdays with Science lab and piano lessons. Languages, VP cards, lyrical science, and bible memory work is mostly done in the car every day.

Edited August 18, 2011 by dmmetler

[Shannanlee]

We will have school 5 days a week M-F and will be following the Public School schedule.

[Karen in CO]

My kids do 3 full days of school, go to an enrichment school one day a week, and have one day with a lighter schedule and science lab with friends. But before my work scheduled changed, we schooled 3 days a week, had a flexible day with lighter work, and took a day off to enjoy just being together. That was my favorite schedule. We do 180 days of school this way.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Karen in CO

[BetterthanIdeserve]

We have to do a substantially equivalent number of days, which is 167 or 168, I believe. We usually do school 4x/week most of the time, sometimes more, sometimes less. We started the 2nd week of July and I hope to end the beginning of May. We'll take 2 weeks off at December and probably 3-4 other full weeks as well. It helped to do a lot of my lesson planning into weekly sections, but I can cover those weekly sections in a 4 day week. So I have 36 weeks planned, plus a few short weeks where we'll school light with math, spelling, writing, and reading and anything we might need to catch up on.

[Veritaserum]

We do 4 days of school at home and 1 day at a co-op (mostly electives like art, theater, dance, etc.). We take 2.5 months off in the summer.

[baybedaul]

We're trying 4 days/week this year because I'd like to have the flexibility for field trips and errands without straying too far from a schedule. 36 weeks of planned curriculum, but that is spread out with lots of breaks. 1 week between each quarter for planning and plenty of time around holidays and vacations. We started August 1st and our calendar takes us to around mid-June to complete the 36 weeks.

[PeacefulChaos]

180 days/36 weeks, spread out from July 18 (when we started) to June 1 of next year. We have a basic schedule of breaks, etc, which has already been edited more than once :)

[Farrar]

Between 4-6 days a week, on average. In the past, we've taken off whenever we seem to need a day (or whenever I need to sleep in!). This year we're trying an experiment where I put all the work for the week up on the board and they take it off as they finish. They have to do it during the official "school time" but they can also get things that don't absolutely require my full attention (like free reading, most workbooks, etc.) during their time if they want to get things done faster. Then, when they finish, they're done for the week. It's new, but we'll see how it goes. One kid basically finished today (four day week) and the other probably won't finish until Sunday (seven day week). But I assume things like that will even out.

[sagira]

I plan for 36 weeks, but we work about 40 weeks or so. We take breaks when we need to. We school four days a week in K, five days a week from 1st onwards. In third year now, we're going to have a co-op day for the first time, and for up to 3 months only. It's far away (the co-op), about an hour and a half away, but with cool classes that are not in our area like Lego Robotics and Mind Lab. Co-op will be Tuesdays.

[NorCalMom]

We school 4 days/week; with 6 weeks on, 1 week off. We take about 3 weeks off around Christmas, and 6 weeks off in the summer.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

We are required 175 days but we easily get more than that in. We take 1 week off of school after every 4 weeks (5 days a week). We do that until everything is finished then we "unschool" over the summers. We usually finish our core curriculum around late June or early July so we usually unschool from early July til the end of August when we start our new year. What I mean by unschool is dc chose 1 history book, 1 science book, 1 poetry book, 1 mystery, 1 additional non fiction book (all of topics of their choosing) and they read those. When they are done we go back and get new books. We do math all the time including on our weeks off and all summer. (1/2 lessons)

[AngelBee]

48 weeks (4 weeks off) but TONS of light days and 4 weeks of review only :)

[Momling]

This next semester we will be doing schoolwork on Tuesday and Thursday days 9-2ish and an hour or so in the evenings. The girls will have PS on MWF 9-2. Swimming lessons, ballet, rock-climbing will fill the afternoons.

[kolamum]

We generally school 6-8 weeks on with 1-2 weeks off. That goes year round. If we use a 36 wk programme {ie, WP, SL, HD} we simply pick up with the next one when the first one "runs out" This CAN make it more expensive, BUT sometimes we add stuff. Plus, we do an Easter study at Easter, sometimes we do a Christmas study at Christmas, and a St. P study on St P's day. ;) It all evens out.

 

We generally school:

 

4 days of Core {usually history & geography combo}, LA, Spelling, Reading, Bible, Art {only done 2-3 times in the 4 days}, PE

 

1 Day of Science and/or catch up.

 

Which means we generally school 4 days a week, but sometimes we save Science for that 5th day and we catch up on any outstanding projects. Only doing 4 days a week leaves the 5th open for "extras" like ball practice, music lessons, swim lessons, art lessons, field trips, Dr appointments, etc. :D

 

Ps, we don't always take a week off if we don't feel like we need a regroup time. It depends on how often we had official 4 day weeks vs 5 day weeks.