Does anyone do a FOUR day week of school?

[amyrjoy]

I am thinking of teaching four days and leaving the fifth for independent work or nothing. For clearly selfish reasons- my sanity. Does this mean I need to school year round? I need some time to write and I can't the days we homeschool- I mentally need to be there for my kids and I'm too exhausted at the end of the day to write ( I have some health issues ). I can't do both. So I am thinking of homeschooling Monday through Thursday, leaving Friday for.....something easy. :bigear:

[Laura in STL]

We have always done a four day week. On Fridays my kids go to enrichment type classes, a fitness class, and have piano lessons. I can count those things as homeschooling hours, but it gives me a break. Next year mine will be 5th and 7th, and I think we will need five days to get everything in. Seeing the age of your kids, I think you could definitely consider a four day week. And no, we do not school year round. I do assign review work for over the summer(about an hour or two), but we manage to finish our curriculum from August to May. That may change as we get into junior high/high school, but when they are young I want them to be able to enjoy a fun summer.

[Mommee & Baba]

We pretty much do 4 day weeks here. Friday's are left for any makeup work, educational games, and most times NOTHING because we did all our planned lessons for the week. Occasionally I will have my kids do a math game on the computer and 1 lesson game of reading eggs.

[Haiku]

We do four days a week, 40 weeks a year. We do 4 weeks on, one week off, with two weeks at the end of June and two weeks at the end of the year.

 

Tara

[melissamomof5]

We have always done 4 days a week. We use our 5th day to do co-op or grocery shopping or field trips.

 

Our curriculum is set up so that there are really 5 days worth of work but we condense it to 4.

 

This fall when I switch to HOD we will still just do 4 days a week but I will either have to condense the 5 days or just have the "year" be an extra month long.

[adventumacademy]

We do 3-4 days a week here..Mondays are reserved for Homeschool coop and if my husband is off a day during the week we usually do something together as a family.

 

On the days we don't actually do "school" because dh is off, we still do a math lesson and phonics lesson while we let dh sleep in.

 

I guess we technically school year round, but we take LOTS of breaks. In our state, we are not required to keep attendance or have a certain number of hours/weeks that we school. We take off from Thanksgiving to New Year, plus we take a week off for each child's birthday, plus a week off for family vacation. We also take a couple weeks in the summer.

 

This is only our second year homeschooling (as far as having to report to State) so I'm sure things will change as the kids grow older and require more.

 

In order to get it all done before we have to submit our yearly report, I do double up on lessons some days. I look ahead to what needs to be done and if there is a really quick lesson one day that may only take 10 minutes to complete, I will do the next lesson as well taking us 20 minutes total instead, but getting two lesson completed.

 

I agree that for my sanity, this "schedule" works best for me. Coop day is easy on me and since we don't officially do lessons, I also use this day to run errands, go grocery shopping etc.

[Daisy]

We do four full days and a light Friday. On Fridays we do Bible, math, and make-up work. We go to the library or to the park with our homeschool group in the afternoon so keeping Friday lighter works well for us.

 

My kids are getting older but we are still able to work this schedule. It just means we really have to be diligent on those four full days.

[Slipper]

We do four days a week and on Fridays, we call the day "Fine Arts Fridays". Our plans on Fridays are typically for older movies that are classics, worksheets on artists and composers. I also do art projects or allow lots of finger-painting, coloring, etc.

 

However, we also plan to school year round.

[2_girls_mommy]

When the kids were younger we did 4 day weeks, leaving Fridays (or any one day of the week) open for field trips, make up work, fun projects, etc.

 

Now we do 4 day weeks with 1 day of out of the house learning at co-op. Co-op is mostly enrichment, so we continue our school year longer than 36 weeks to make sure we get a year's worth of math and whatnot in.

 

Since we can't use Fridays to finish up work now we often have homework to finish up on the weekend. But I think that is pretty normal at my dd's grade level (4th/5th grade )

[Roxy Roller]

We have done a four day week for the past few years, and I cannot imagine that we will ever go back to a five day week. I am 'doing school' from about 8am to 4:30pm, on those days, so with evening activities like AWANA, homeschool gym and handbells, we don't have much time for anything else on those days. We leave Fridays for our sleep-in, cleaning, appointments, or just plain fun days. If there is a holiday on a Monday that my DH is home, we just shift our day off to correspond to his day off. My DD12 occasionally does some work on the weekend, but that is not necessarily because she can't get it completed during the week, it is mainly because she doesn't mind doing a little on the weekends. I foresee that she may have to do some work on Fridays or on the weekends, but it will be independent work, I will not be working with her then.

 

We also school approximately 40 weeks a year. I do not like our breaks to be longer than 3 weeks, because I feel that my kids start to forget things.

[Mommie_Jen]

I probably don't really count, since we are starting K this spring when pre-k is done. But in pulling together our plans, I have a 4 day school week planned with Fridays being our scheduled play day with friends and nature exploration/science day.

[Heidi]

Yep, except Wednesday is our day off. The kids have a homeschool class they go to on Wednesday. I condense a weeks worth of work into four days so we only school 36 weeks still.

[alpidarkomama]

We do 4-1/2 days a week. Fridays we only do 2-1/2 hours. We learn year-round, but sprinkle vacations through the whole year. We do about 210 learning days per year. Works great for us!!!

[hsmom10]

We do a 4 day also. My kids go to an enrichment type program for 6 hours on Fridays, so we do school M-Th.

[...................]

We pretty much do four days per week here. It does mean we school almost year round. But we still get a month off in summer and a week at Christmas and two weeks whenever my dh has vacation.

 

I think it's a lot less stressful this way. And since I get errands done on Fridays, it makes our Saturday so much more enjoyable.

[zoo_keeper]

We do four days, with the fifth day usually a HS group outing or get-together or lesson of some sort. We also school year round so even our 4 days usually aren't hours and hours on end.

[foxbridgeacademy]

We used to school 4 days a week and we schooled year round. Now we are down to 3 days of at home instruction and 2 days of Co-op (covers science, art and some type of computer class). I'm also thinking that in the summer instead of doing "regular" school work we'll do only science.

My point is that unless you're in a state with alot of oversight you can arrange your schedule however you want. So yeah, I would think independent study would be fine, and actually bneficial as a step to idependent learning for H.S. and beyond.

[misidawnrn]

We do a 4 day week because I work every other Friday-Monday. I have our days set as day 1, day 2, etc, not Mon, Tues, Wed, etc. Day 1 has a little more work than the other days since DD has a Spelling test that day and she gets her new list. She has to write her new words 5 times each. Some of the other lessons are doubled that day, some on day 2. It works great for us.

[Lightly Salted]

We do mostly 4 day school weeks around here. Friday is usually DH's day off, so if he's off, we're off - one of the perks of homeschooling (made easier, of course, while the kids are young; might not always be the case). If, however, he has to work, we do as well. Of course, most of our read-alouds are scheduled for Saturday during sports seasons, to and from games, and I save messy science experiments for weekends with Daddy so I sometimes count those as a day of school.

 

We school from July - May, taking off for a short summer before it's outrageously hot, and have never had any problem making our school year of 180 days, even when working only 4 days a week most of the year.

[melissamomof5]

Daisy - totally off topic, but I absolutely love the words next to your children in your signature. I can see those same descriptions applying to two of my own. :)

[jar7709]

We do mostly a 4-day school week, and thursdays are the day "off". But, they aren't really off, it's just the day that I have away from the kids for my work. On those days my DD goes to a preschool, and DS either hangs out with DH at work or with grandma. I usually send some math worksheets or something along with DS that may or may not get done. We school more-or-less year round, with somewhat lighter workload in the summer.

[the evolving homemaker]

we do 4 days a week here too, and they do an home school enrichment program 1 day a wk. I plan to mostly school year round, taking time for field trips and time off when we need it/vacation time whenever. it is easier for me than trying to start them up again with school after two months of no school and it keeps us in a rhythm and not lazy about our days.

 

i could get lazy. :lol:

[ThreeBlessings]

Friday is our easy day. So long as we've completed everything on my planner for Monday-Thursday that isn't optional, they do only one Math review worksheet, a chapter in their assigned read alone book, a dvd piano lesson and piano practice, and art of choice. Much less involvement and work on my part than a usual school day, but they are stilling adding to their schooling hours. They can, for the most part, get these things done without my help so long as they have my planner to look at for a reminder of what needs done and a question or small conversation here and there. We need 900 hours a year and we'd all rather not school year round. We did one year and we prefer a summer off as we like to get out a lot.

Edited February 9, 2012 by ThreeBlessings

[PentecostalMom]

We do four days a week pretty much year-round. We do take time off for....whatever. We take time off at the "normal" times, like holdiays, but we also take other times. For instance, dd's 6th birthday is March 22nd (a Thursday), and dh's birthday is March 24th (a Saturday). we are making a long weekend of it and going to the Georgia Aquarium on the 22nd for a homeschool class, then staying in a hotel and going to the outlet mall or something. Not certain of other details yet. Sometimes we do a lesson of reading or something on Friday or Saturday, but not much more. The reading can be OPGTR, her readin aloud, or doing Reading Eggs or Starfall. Just something to work on reading. She is doing well, but I feel we are on the cusp of a breakthrough, so I keep nudging her a little. (squirrel!)

 

Anyway, we use Friday for shopping, appointments, hanging out with friends, or whatever we want. It makes life a little easier on all of us. I will take a week or so off to organize the new school materials and get the first six weeks or so of lesson plans together. Dh actually helps with planning so it doesn't take a lot of time.

[mama2cntrykids]

We do half days on Fridays (only math/la). The kids do well with it and I'm satisfyed (sp?) with how they're doing.

 

When they were younger, we didn't do anything on Fridays. Now that they're older, I feel they really need it to stay on-track, but that's *my* kids, ymmv.

 

That said, my kindergartner doesn't do much on Fridays, usually fun type learning, which is fine with me.

[Heart_Mom]

I had decided in January to to do a schedule like this:

 

August through May: 4 days per week

June through July: 3 days per week

(with a few weeks here and there for breaks)

 

I really like the 4 day per week schedule, but since I've found out I'm expecting baby #5, I've not been able to let myself take off one day per week. I guess I'm not sure how long it will take to get back into the swing of things after the baby's born. But I don't think it's ever taken more than a month, so I'm thinking I should probably be willing to go back to my above listed plan!:001_smile:

[momto2Cs]

We kind of do 4.5 days. Monday through Thursday are regular school days in the afternoons (I work mornings outside the home), and then Friday, after work, I take the kids to a park day with lots of friends, then we do just math and writing (ds10) or phonics (dd8), plus our bedtime read aloud. Sometimes they'll watch a documentary on Fridays too.

 

ETA: We do not school year round, but aim for about 38-40 weeks. During the summers off, we'll still learn something - this year I think we may focus on state history. We try to do "summer schooling" in a fun, light fashion, heavy on the field trips and good books, and really not much else. We continue nature studies year 'round, because that's just a part of our lives.

Edited February 9, 2012 by momto2Cs

[jhockley]

We started out 4days/wk leaving the 5th open for field trips, but the 5th day has gotten filled in with extra-curriculars. Monday is ymca (2hr), art (90min), am. history (90min) and her girl scout meeting and a library stop. So it's not really a day off, but I'm chauffeur rather than teacher. Now when we take field trips we usually do half 'school' the day before and half the day of. At least with 1st grade that's quite do-able.

[Mommy22alyns]

We do a four day school week as every Monday is co-op day. MFW Adventures is a 4-day week, and we haven't had a problem getting everything else done at this pace either. I assume that one day we will need a full five days at home, and then we'll quit co-op. But we don't need it yet. :)

[Ibbygirl]

I did 4 days a week for years and we had Fun Friday on the 5th. That was our day to go out and do field trips, go to movies, or just out to the bookstore or other fun place. Since we've started HS this year though we've been doing Fun Friday every other Friday. I do home school year round (a lighter schedule in summer, but still working mostly on math), but I would do it whether I was on a 4 day or 5 day schedule. My dd needs a year round schedule because she has a lot of problems retaining what she has learned. We just take several 2-3 week long breaks throughout the year and it works for us. :)

[Alice]

We do 4 days. Thursdays is our co-op day and it's in the morning, the afternoons are usually playtime with friends. Occasionally we'll do something schoolish in the afternoon but more typically it's off. Our co-op is semi-academic. At my kids ages I look at it like they have all the extra classes that would normally be spread out over a week in one day (music, art, pe, drama, etc).

 

Because I work two half days our schedule is actually more like:

Mon: 1/2 day school with me, afternoon is off for kids except to finish up any work left over

Tues: Full day school

Wed: 1/2 day school with Dad, piano lessons, sometimes some read-alouds or science in the afternoon

Thurs: Co-op, play with friends

Fri: Full day school

 

It works for us now even though it's not the most traditional week. I think as we get into the upper grades we'll have have Mon and Wed be full days too, but they can do more and more without me so it will be easier with me gone.

 

We've done variations on the year-round schedule. I'd say we sort of do year-round but with our longest break in the summer. It's more based on what else is going on in our lives than on a set calendar.

[Beth in SW WA]

We do school 4 days/week. Friday is wonky. We often do math on weekends.