kristinannie Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 We homeschool year round to give us a lot of flexibility. I never feel badly when we take a day or 2 off during a week when things come up. However, I decided to do a formal break for Christmas. We ended school last Friday and will restart after the 1st of the year. It just feels so weird not to be doing school. We definitely don't school 5 days a week most weeks, but we do school every day that we are home and not sick. This is the second day of break and it just feels so weird to me. The kids have even been playing school. :lol: It is a lot of fun though. I have time to get Christmas stuff done. The kids are doing lots of crafts, baking, making Christmas cards, etc. Does it get easier to take a break? Maybe it just feels weird to be off of our schedule. Am I just completely crazy here? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joyofsixreboot Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I feel like we're slacking. Breaks make me feel weird. I'm not any good at vacations either.:001_huh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nukeswife Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I usually have the exact opposite happen and find it's much to easy for me to say "we'll just take a day or two off" because that day or 2 will stretch into a week or 2. I have to have set time off or we get really derailed. I am feeling guilty lately because we've been off since Thanksgiving, but took way to much "mental health" time before then and got a late start to the year because of a family trip and dh leaving for his new duty station. I know though deep down that trying to do school now would be a total fight and frustrate us all, so we'll take our time and jump back in on Jan 5th (my dad is visiting from the 23rd - 4th) but we usually have no problem going full throttle once we start back in Jan until April, not sure why but that's always been our most productive time of the year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SorrelZG Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I usually have the exact opposite happen and find it's much to easy for me to say "we'll just take a day or two off" because that day or 2 will stretch into a week or 2. I have to have set time off or we get really derailed. I am feeling guilty lately because we've been off since Thanksgiving, but took way to much "mental health" time before then and got a late start to the year because of a family trip and dh leaving for his new duty station. I know though deep down that trying to do school now would be a total fight and frustrate us all, so we'll take our time and jump back in on Jan 5th (my dad is visiting from the 23rd - 4th) but we usually have no problem going full throttle once we start back in Jan until April, not sure why but that's always been our most productive time of the year. This is more me. Going for a strong restart in January, also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jane Elliot Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 We homeschool year round to give us a lot of flexibility. I never feel badly when we take a day or 2 off during a week when things come up. However, I decided to do a formal break for Christmas. We ended school last Friday and will restart after the 1st of the year. It just feels so weird not to be doing school. We definitely don't school 5 days a week most weeks, but we do school every day that we are home and not sick. This is the second day of break and it just feels so weird to me. The kids have even been playing school. :lol: It is a lot of fun though. I have time to get Christmas stuff done. The kids are doing lots of crafts, baking, making Christmas cards, etc. Does it get easier to take a break? Maybe it just feels weird to be off of our schedule. Am I just completely crazy here? Yes! I mean yes, I have trouble with breaks, and no, you're not completely crazy. Our college kids got home Friday (hooray!), and I'm trying to get into this break thing, but I miss my routine. It's like withdrawal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairProspects Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Yeah, I used to feel that way when I was only schooling one. Now that I'm schooling both kids, I'm more than ready for a break. :D I think I'm in awe of those with large families! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I think it is the age of your kids. I never formed a formal school calendar when my kids were little. Now I can't survive w/o our scheduled breaks. I need them for my mental stability, getting our house in order, dr appts, grading, lesson planning, etc. When their school days can take over 9 hrs to finish, trust me, you won't feel 1 iota of guilt on your days off. (conversely, though, you might feel more pressure to not take random days and feel more pressure to have 5 day/weeks. ;) ) Reluctance to resume is not abnormal either. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.... Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 We're on break until January, so I'm on here! :001_smile: It does feel like you're slacking, tho. :tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mama25angels Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Usually, no, but this year we've been on such a roll that I actually don't want to take a break because i'm afraid to ruin our momentum. We're taking a break though because I do need one to stay fresh and get things ready for the rest of the year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom2boys030507 Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 I struggle with breaks and so do my boys. They don't know what to do with open seemingly endless days. We are doing "light" school for the month of December. This is also what we do in the summer. It starts with the boys finishing up the last few lessons they have in a unit. Then, they get to pick an area of interest to study. We do more science experiments, more reading, more free time. They boys do one or two subjects daily. For example, today they did Greek and Life of Fred. Tomorrow, we are baking cookies with grandma so they will do typing and maybe a dictation. I have found that doing one or two things that engage their brains at the beginning of the day help my boys to be able to be more in control of their bodies and words as we move through the rest of the day. During light school, we take lots of days completely off, to go on field trips and to just have days off. I have found if I take any more than 1 week off at home my boys get bored. Even though they are the ones picking topics to learn more about it feels structured to them. Structure is very important for my boys. I look at the ages of your kids and think it is more about routine then learning something new. Look at doing fun art projects or other things you don't seem to get to with your kids. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhrice3 Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 When my kids were young, they were less aware of what the schools were doing. My dh is an Emergency Physician so he worked a lot of holidays and all our family is out of town so it was easy to school through a large portion of the holiday breaks. We would simply school when Dad was working and take off when he was off or family visited or vice versa. We always took a really long holiday in a warm climate during Feb so they never complained. However, as they got older and developed friendships with school kids, they came to realize that everyone else had school breaks. I usually just made deals with them, and I would set a spot in the curriculum that I wanted to have done by New Year. To tell you the truth, as they got older and were more involved with charity work or group functions at Christmas or all the music performances at different venues, I was happy for a break. One thing that we always did even when we "slacked off" during the holiday time was reading aloud, Bible reading, personal reading, music, and TYN. Plus, there was always baking and different things that they could help with. I think that it takes a long time as a home schooler to "not" think that you are slacking whenever you are not doing school! AND then type A personalities always think that. Enjoy your children and Merry Christmas, ReneeR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kristinannie Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 Yeah, I used to feel that way when I was only schooling one. Now that I'm schooling both kids, I'm more than ready for a break. :D I think I'm in awe of those with large families! I think you are right on this one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krismoose Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 At this point, we don't generally take more than 2 days completely off in a row. We did this through the summer as well. All of us, ds in particular, need some structure during the day. So we're doing a very light school schedule, (maybe 30 min?) just enough to practice math facts and keep him writing a little every day. He reads on his own for fun. Oh, and vision exercises are done daily. We have plenty of time for enjoying Christmas activities, visit with friends, wrapping presents, making gifts, reading through our box of Christmas books. We'll resume our fuller schedule in January. As a pp said, I'm sure we'll have more deliberate breaks when the dc get older. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halcyon Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 We have a hard time taking a break here too. In part, it's because my boys don't do particularly well with breaks longer than a week, and it's also due to the fact that there's just so much good stuff to cover :) We're only taking a few days off at Christmas, but we tend to have reading time and math games regardless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kristinannie Posted December 16, 2011 Author Share Posted December 16, 2011 I have to admit, we are actually doing a lighter school schedule. We have done our reading lessons almost every day. We have also been doing extra read alouds. I also really think that crafts, painting, writing Christmas cards, baking, etc counts as school...just a more fun type of school! I guess I couldn't take a true break afterall. The weather isn't good and the kids aren't just going to sit and watch tv all day so we have to do something!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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