If you have an alternative schedule...

[Moxie]

what does it look like? By alternative, I mean not 5 day/week, Sept-May. Four days year round? All of December off? I want to make some changes next year and would love some options.

[ezrabean2005]

We school six days a week year round in the evenings. We take off time as needed or as we have vacations scheduled. Both DH and I work full time so it is pretty easy to maintain. We have Saturdays off right now, but the day of the week often changes. I shoot for six weeks on, then a week off to keep myself and the kids refreshed.

 

ETA: I also want to point out the main reason we do this is because we don't have an entire day to HS. We only have a few concentrated hours each day. So this means we do less each day, but more throughout the year.

Edited December 5, 2011 by ezrabean2005
Additional Info.

[Willow Creek Academy]

With my olders, this is what we did. With my youngers, will have December off right now. but won't this coming school year. We rarely do a 5 day week, unless we are behind. The 4 "summer" months" we have a week off each month for camping, day trips, community events, camp etc. November has a week off for T-day and December a week off for Christmas.

 

January 4 weeks / 4 days a week / Nature Study Friday

February 4 weeks / 4 days a week / Nature Study Friday

March 4 weeks / 4 days a week / Nature Study Friday

April 4 weeks / 4 days a week / Nature Study Friday

May 4 weeks / 4 days a week / Nature Study Friday

June 3 weeks / 3day a week / Nature Study Friday

July 3 weeks / 3day a week Nature Study Friday

August 3 weeks / 3day a week Nature Study Friday

September 3 weeks / 3 day a week Nature Study Friday

October 4 weeks / 4 days a week / Nature Study Friday

November 3 weeks / 4 days a week / Nature Study Friday

December 3 weeks / 4 days a week / Nature Study Friday

[diaperjoys]

We are trying out an alternative schedule this year. Three weeks on, one week off, year round. Two weeks off at Christmas.

[Bloggermom]

We homeschool year round and only take a week off at Christmas and another week off for 4th of July.

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

We school for 3-4 weeks at a time then take a week off. Until this year its always been 3 weeks of school 1 week off but we changed it for this year to fit ECC because some countries we study for 1 week, some 2 weeks and some 3 weeks so we didn't want to have to break a country up over our break. It is a WONDERFUL schedule because we avoid burn out for the most part. Occasionally we get a little bit but nothing major!! We finish all our books and go til we are done. Usually by spring we are down to 3/4-1/2 our normal load of school work. We are usually completely done late June or early July. We do math all year long even on our school breaks during the year and during the summer.

[Critterfixer]

Our schedule is Sunday through Thursday noon. I work the rest of Thursday, all day Friday and half-day Saturday, so the boys get those days off, with only reading and phonics being required of them when I get home from work in the evenings.

We go year round and rarely take more than two days off anywhere in the calendar year. The exceptions might be during the summer, when I might work a week at a time, and they get those days off. (Again, phonics and reading, and math would be done during those days.)

I've done it for two years now and so far no burn-out issues. But then my younger son really benefits from the consistency, and so do I. My older son so far has found this routine to be comfortable, mostly because I'm pretty willing to look ahead at the weather and pick days off to coincide with good days to go play outside. Additionally, I don't mind having long days because we break often for outdoor play and work. (So I might school from 9am to 6 or 7 pm) which would not be acceptable to a lot of people.)

Works for us, though!

[boscopup]

We school year round, though it's still 5 days a week. We do 6 weeks on, 1 week off, and take 3 weeks off in June. Basically, our last day of the "school year" is somewhere in the end of May, whenever it is for the local schools in my area. Then toward the end of June, we start up the new year again.

 

I like this schedule because a) we worked through summer when it was too hot to be outside and thus were able to take off days guilt-free when the nice fall weather hit, b) I started out with 215 "scheduled" school days which left plenty of extra time to have an impromptu week off for sanity or other reason, and c) busy boys are good boys and I couldn't put up with the 3 of them all summer long if we didn't have a routine to follow.

 

I've taken one "sanity" week off guilt free, so now we have 210 school days this year. My cover school only requires 160 days. The b&m schools are required to do 180 days. I try to shoot for 180 as my minimum.

[3monkeys]

This year is our first time trying this schedule and we love it so far.

 

Started August 1st:

6 weeks of school

1 week off

9 weeks of school

6 weeks off (Thankgiving week through December)

9 weeks of school

1 week off

6 weeks of school

1 week off

6 weeks of school

Off 2 months for summer

[foxbridgeacademy]

We have co-op on Mondays, then try to get everything else done on the other 4 days. We are about to add in another co-op"ish" art group on Fridays, a PE class on Thursdays.... not sure when we'll actually do school, weekends?

 

No, the plan is starting in January to do some stuff in the morning, like Math, Science, any Work book stuff. Then do reading, history, videos in the evening after activities. We school year round but take off from mid June through mid July (birthdays). Do a sort of review through August then start new stuff in September. Around Holidays we get kind of "unschooly". Especially Thanksgiving to Christmas is "catch up" and crafty time. We take off whenever we need a break not really planned out.

[Mommy22alyns]

We school 4 days a week, Tue-Fri. I originally intended to go year-round, but got derailed two summers ago, so we take summers off and just do Summer Bridge workbooks. For this summer, we're also going to study some Shakespeare.

[laundrycrisis]

5 days per week, M-F, year round. I only take a week off when forced to by a camp or vacation. Our 5 day weeks often do not allow all five days - they get disrupted by appointments, therapy etc. so I like keeping the 5-day schedule year round to make up for those times.

[Ellie]

Our schedule for many years looked like this:

 

Monday and Tuesday: Official School Days. No errands, no outside classes (until after 5ish--dance classes and whatnot), no field trips; no projects for me, even. Official School Stuff put out on the kitchen table for dc to do or not. Work on Camp Fire badges if applicable. Dc do whatever they want (no TV, though). Did you know that if children have nothing else to do, they will often choose to do Official School Stuff on their own? Who knew?!

 

Wednesday: Library. All books returned whether they'd been read or not. Hang out at the library for a couple of hours. Check out whatever books we want (or none at all). Come home by lunch time, maybe goof off with friends in the afternoon.

 

Thursday: Field trip. Every.single.week. Usually just us, sometimes friends invited if I wanted to do a field trip that required a group. Sometimes related to something we were studying, sometimes not.

 

Friday: Clean house, including all laundry; park day once a month.

 

Weekends: free of housework or school work, time to goof off as a family.

 

Official School Stuff put away Thanksgiving through about the middle of January. A couple of weeks off in the spring, a couple of weeks off in late August/early September. Time off for visiting grandparents or mental health days (such as Disneyland in the middle of the week in April). Otherwise, same schedule year-round.

[MerryAtHope]

We tend to school starting the 3rd week in July and going until the end of May. We work M-TH, and either a half-day on Friday (afternoon at friends) or Friday off (work around the house in the am, afternoon at friends, or some other variation).

 

Merry :-)

[krisperry]

Mine is pretty complicated so I'll link to a spreadsheet that shows it:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtefHkOTSNcmdFo2WHFKS25LM2hMMjZVdkpMZm9tcXc

 

Basically, I have 5 children that I school that share no subjects together. I found it impossible to get all of it done for all 5. My solution is to school 7 days a week focusing on 3 children each day. They have different days off. They are responsible for some independent work even on the days that I'm not working with them directly.

[4littleones]

We school 6 days a week in the morning. I try to finish all the teacher-dependent subjects (math, writing) by 12 noon. Whatever is left, they have to do independently (reading-based subjects).

We have Saturdays off.

 

I am in graduate school and I need the afternoons for classwork. Basically, Mon, Tue and Wed are "heavy" days and Thurs, Fri and Sun are "light" days.

 

I have recently scheduled our work for six weeks having the seventh week off, but we haven't implemented that yet.

 

ETA: We school year round and take a big break of 4-6 weeks during the summer to visit family back home (we live overseas).

Edited December 5, 2011 by 4littleones
typo: hadn't had my coffee yet!

[JessMcG]

We used to school 5 days a week, year round, taking off as needed. We averaged 190 days of school per year over two years.

 

We are following the traditional schedule this year (and now, in preparation for baby #5, due early May, I'm cutting out even more days off :tongue_smilie:). I know I'll love the big summer break, but I'm missing the flexibility of past years.

[stm4him]

Hi! We school year round. We do 4 days a week and a co-op on Fridays (CC) 24 weeks of the year. The other weeks that we don't do CC we do 5 days of school. We take 1-2 weeks at Thanksgiving for house organizing, a week at Christmas, a week in spring, and 2 weeks in the Summer for vacation, roughly. Sometimes we have to take more than that for moves or babies, etc. but that is our goal.

 

stm4him

[Classically Minded]

We school 3 days per week, Mon-Wed, then we use Fridays for all the crafts/projects/experiments. We school year-round, so we take breaks whenever we want. We like to take December off and some time in the summer and a week here and there.

[GoVanGogh]

We start our school year in January, just to be really different. ;)

We school 4-5 days a week, 4-6 weeks at a time. We take a week off as needed. We also take a couple weeks off in spring and in fall, plus the month of December. I plan school 'at home' for 155 or so days, then we do a few educational camps (art and chess) plus a lot of field trips to round things out.

We just finished our school year last week and had 182 days of school.

I try not to stress out about 'getting our days in,' as we live in a non-reg state. I just worry that we are covering what I think we should be and DS is learning and enjoying learning.

[Classically Minded]

We start our school year in January, just to be really different.

 

This is really interesting, so you start each grade or level in January? I'm thinking this may be something we want to incorporate as well!

[Amy Jo]

We were doing 5 weeks on, 1 week off, with a longer break in Jan/Feb (I get blahs then) and in July. Right now we are trying out HUFI, if that works out I am considering: 3 weeks of school per calendar month OR AO's term schedule (Sep-Nov, Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun) with the off months doing 1 math lesson, something written and ___ time reading.

 

I keep wanting to do 6 days a week, I think it would be easier. I may try it in January after seeing several of you doing that.

[Mrs_JWM]

We're using the "classic" six weeks on/one week off schedule. We started in August and took a week off in September. We've had another week off since then as well, but now we're facing a few weeks off in December and that's TOO MUCH! I think we're just going to stretch one week of school over two weeks in December and get a bit ahead; I never imagined having too much time off would be a bad thing...

[TheAutumnOak]

We are doing 6 weeks on, 1 week off...There is a time in May where we have 5 weeks on 1 off because of DH's vacation and stuff like that...We are also off for the entire months of December and August...We are doing 5 days now, but I am looking to change it to 4 for me with my oldest doing independent work on the 5th day...

[ErinE]

We school year round with no real pattern to weeks off other than the big holidays (2 wks Christmas to New Years, Easter, Thanksgiving) and we try to take a vacation in the spring and fall. For the summer, we take all of July off. This lets us visit cousins who are on public school vacation and grandparents that live far away. This year, the kids will do a little school (math drills & phonics) when we're home during this break. I stopped all instruction last July and the transition into school was a bit bumpy.

 

Our formal start to school is August 1st, but we continue to add in curriculum throughout the year. My ds finished SM3A October 21st. I gave him the rest of the month off from math (other than multiplication drills) and we started up SM3B Nov 1st. I did the same for dd, which confuses her. She keeps telling people she's in first grade because that's her math level. Both kids are or will be reported and tested based on the state's cut-off date. My dd is too young to report so I'll probably test her just to introduce her to the concept and prepare her for testing next year.

 

We have a full schedule Monday through Thursday. Subjects are math and language arts (grammar, reading, writing, spelling) daily with history M/W and science T/Th. Library is Wednesday afternoons. Friday is light schooling (mainly math) with fun activities like art, museum trips, or toy browsing (two hours at Target last Friday). My kids are early risers so we start 7:30/8 am and on good days, we're done by 11 to 11:30 am. With the sun rising so late, I put on classical music at 7 am to rouse anyone not already awake. Extra activities are scheduled for afternoons.

[GoVanGogh]

This is really interesting, so you start each grade or level in January?

Yes.

My only homeschooled child has a Christmas birthday. We take off December and start fresh in January, so I totally go by his age. He is "age x" for the entire school year. I bump him up when need be or when we finish a book. I don't consider grade levels except for the few things that go by grade. Most of our outside activities go by age, so it really seldom comes up.

 

People do ask if I worry about this down the line, but my high school class had a lot of people graduate mid-term so I don't see this as a problem.

 

The only down-side has been that I finish up our school year at Thanksgiving time, which can be a bit hectic. I use that week after Thanksgiving as a review and wrap-up for the year.

 

The positive -- In February, when most homeschool moms are complaining of burnout, we are just getting going strong. :D Our 'February' (burnout time) is August, which is when everyone else is going back to school and looking forward to their new school year. I just ride their wave of excitement. No burnout. Brilliant, I think.

 

I don't know that I would thought to do this if DS didn't have an end-of-the-year birthday. We started homeschooling using a more traditional calendar, but we went year-round and I always struggled with where to end one year and start another. Then I realized - we don't use the PS scope/sequence or their curriculum - why should I follow their calendar? DS had made a huge leap around his birthday - think it was the second year we homeschooled - so I needed to bump him up a level anyway. It just made sense to change to a January-December school year.

 

Now I think it is 'fun' that we start our school year in January. New year. New school books. And it makes everyone think we have totally lost our minds. :D

You homeschool? You start your school year in January?! :001_huh:

[warneral]

I'm new to homeschooling. Over the summer we schooled fewer subjects/hours than normal. We added in lots of enriching activities in the afternoons (zoo, parks, nature walks, playing with friends).

 

During the school year we typically school along with the public school schedule except we do 4 days a week. Fridays we typically do more exploratory learning such as learning games, educational movies, field trips, and a visit to my friend who homeschools her highschoolers. I would say Friday is our "delight led learning day".

 

We took a week off at Thanksgiving and I found that it was enjoyable, but hard to find the motivation to come back! I hope we adjust to time off better in the future.

[go_go_gadget]

We do year-round, M-F, and sometimes weekends, with no scheduled breaks. However, it's pretty rare that we get through an entire month without a few days off, either due to illness or my own school schedule (I'm an undergrad). So we chug away whenever possible, and don't feel the slightest bit guilty when we can't get to it. If they weren't making such great progress or if our days off were threatening to break even with the days on, we'd have to change something. But it's working beautifully for now.

[Tawlas]

Take this with a grain of salt because my kid are too young to have a real school schedule (oldest is PK/K lol) but one of the many reasons we decided to homeschool was so that our kids could really be a part of the ranch we own and operate. I'm tossing around the idea of schooling year-round with days off as needed for "fun" ranch things like round up, turn out, branding and other big events as well as a full day once a week counted as school in areas like PE (horseback riding, physical labor, etc), Nature Study, etc. But, on the other hand, I like the idea of having a full month off in April or May to let them really get into calving and lambing seasons. So maybe rather than a long break in the summer, I'd do a long break in the spring? Hard to say exactly how it will turn out, but I can count on it be alternative and fitting us exactly!

[mskelly]

I love that there are so many different schedules! We are pretty flexible, but in general we school year round. For Dec. I've ditched all of our regular work though and we are doing a big Christmas Around the World thing. We are also playing lots of games that I always think I'll get to during school, but never do. :001_smile: In fact today, my DS was playing a math game and said to me, "You know this game could be used to teach you math!" :lol: Pretty sneaky!

WE take days off as needed and don't stress about it.

[choirfarm]

To be honest, I'm not sure I've had the same schedule two years in a row. Some years we have gone July to June. Some years we have gone July to the middle of May. This year we are going end of August to middle of May. What I do is to print off calendars for the entire year. Then I pencil in any big trips or mission trips that we are going to take. Now that oldest children are in cc, I have to put school vacations on there as well. :tongue_smilie:( I hate losing the flexibility!) Then I pencil in Chalkdust, allowing 2 days for every lesson. ( Even though oldest takes 1 and youngest sometimes takes 2. It is an average.) I pencil in module 1 over a couple of weeks for Apologia. etc. I make sure everything I want to cover fits. I also tend to put in a few catch-up weeks. When we had the flexibility, dh would often want to go on a vacation or take some time off later in the year that I hadn't planned on. Or maybe a relative got sick, so we took off to help out. That way I have flexibility. Then every couple of weeks I check off where we are. I make sure that we are on track. I know that , "Nope, we need to do math EVERY SINGLE day as we are already behind!" or "Yep, blow off math today. You are way ahead. Take more time for AP Gov." These are not lesson plans, these are just general where I want to be.

 

This is what I did when I taught in ps. I penciled in where I wanted to be in one lesson plan book. Then I wrote down what we actually did in another.

[jcross222]

We are a very sports-oriented family here so we schedule school around our sports practice/games schedules. We usually do about 1-2hrs of work on Mon and Tues mornings. Wed is a regular 4-5 hr school day. Thursday is a lighter day with the 3R's only in the afternoon. Friday is a regular school day and then we use either Sat or Sun to finish whatever work didn't get finished for that week. If all was accomplished (rarely happens), then the weekend is for housework, laundry, and playing outside.

We are yr round schoolers so we take off a few days here and there for holidays and a week here and there in the summer for camps. Miraculously, it somehow all gets done. This is our 7th yr homeschooling, but only our 4th year with this crazy schedule.

I suspect that if we continue homeschooling through high school, the schedule will get more intense and school will be travelling with us more often.

[Halcyon]

We school almost year round, rarely taking days off, except for a few days at Christmas, and then 3 weeks in the summer for the boys to attend camp. Reading is required every day ("school" reading during the week, "free choice" reading on the weekend or any time after school reading is done).

 

We probably school about 220 days a year? I don't keep track except for the minimum as required by the state.

[elegantlion]

We school from August to the end of May. We do about 6 weeks on, one week off. We take 2 weeks off at Christmas.

[EmilyGF]

We do math and language arts any day we are home all year round. We generally do other subjects M-F, with W pretty light, and German school Saturdays. Then, we can freely travel with my husband whenever possible. (He travels exotic places for work.) I also feel free to take days off for the museum, family in town, and other things because I know we're well over our 180 days.

 

In my planner, I record work accomplished, not work planned. If I started seeing long blocks without consistent work, I would rethink our plan.

 

Emily

[justamouse]

We take off six weeks over the Christmas holidays. We're off now, and sometime in January we'll start back up. I also school all summer-because we get bored. The kids stay much sharper doing a bit of school every day during the summer, but we don't do a 'full' day. We start at about 8 and finish by lunch then spend the rest of the day by the pool.

 

In my planner, I record work accomplished, not work planned. If I started seeing long blocks without consistent work, I would rethink our plan.

 

Emily

 

this is what we do, too.

[Dolphin]

We have a 36 week/42 week school year.

 

Evan Moor daily (Math, Language Review, Vocab etc...) is based on the traditional 36 week school year in America. Ds has some of those that are in his "independent folder" When we are in one of those weeks, we also do spelling, grammar, Math, the full school curriculum. We have Mon, Wed, as heavy school days. Tues, and Thur is just independent folder and Math, Friday is Independent folder only.

 

I have built my motivation into Friday. Once ds turns in his independent folder, the day is his. He can watch tv, play video games, we can go on field trips etc... If his work isn't done, it is catch up time for him.

 

SOTW has 42 chapters. I find that we are just breezing over things if we do more than a chapter a week. So we have 10 "school lite" weeks Where we just do SOTW, Math, and lots of independent reading. This is good down time for me, as Mom sometimes just needs a week off.

 

Then 10 weeks of no school scattered in.

 

I don't plan to far ahead as we have school lite and no school as needed throughout the year. So far it seems to be working, I don't know how it will be adding dd next year.

 

Nicole

[MissKNG]

Our official school year is September through May at 4 days a week. Then we do light work during the summer. As for time off during our official year, we follow the ps schedule since my niece often comes down to play/spend the night!

[Haiku]

Four weeks on, one week off, year-round. We school 4 days a week. We take two weeks at Christmas and two weeks at the end of June. The kids start their new grades the first day of school after July 4th.

 

Tara

[*Lulu*]

Our schedule varies a bit from year to year.

 

Last year we did 6 days a week (one day being a lite day), 6 weeks on, 2 off, plus a week off at Christmas. It worked fairly well.

 

This year the over-arching structure is the same, but the config. of subjects has changed since we have added several activities that take us away from the house.

 

Monday- piano, breakfast basket, group work (Science, unit study, math lab, art), school in a bag (MEP, fact practice, IPAD edu-apps), car school (SOTW audio, Latin Video, composer study), pre-k in a bag

Tuesday- piano, breakfast basket, library, school in a bag (as above- add AAS, Latin, and character study), homeschool social group

Wednesday- piano, breakfast basket, group work (Science, unit study, art, artist/composer study), car school, pre-k in a bag

Thursday- piano, breakfast basket, seat work (language, math, English, logic, fun)

Friday- piano, breakfast basket, seat work (language, math, English, logic, fun), nature study

Saturday- piano, breakfast basket, seat work (math, English)