How long is your "school" year?

[momto2Cs]

I'm debating between 36 weeks (general California school year length) and 38 weeks. Sometimes a couple of extra weeks makes a BIG difference!

 

How long is your school year?

[Snickerdoodle]

We school year round. We do take off time when needed.

 

For example, I told the boys they could have yesterday and today off from schoolwork. That means they still had to do math and writing. ;)

[lisamarie]

We school year round. Though we have a lighter schedule in the summer--they do math and reading every day, and I do more nature studies/science topics.

[Kate CA]

I'm debating between 36 weeks (general California school year length) and 38 weeks. Sometimes a couple of extra weeks makes a BIG difference!

 

How long is your school year?

 

We school almost year-round. We take off all of August and part of the holidays. I love it. I feel free to take a day and do something fun or have people over on a school day when I otherwise would be stressed about it. We have done this for years now and we all need the month of August to recharge and get excited about September, but any longer and we all kind of go nuts. lol

:)

[Walking-Iris]

All year :lol: No seriously...I plan a 36 week year. I plan two terms. Some things I want to cover and hopefully finish in the first term (before Christmas) and some things I want to be done with by about May. But we do "school" all year long because there's so many projects etc. that we can always find something to do all year. Science/History and other content areas like music/art happen all year. I don't stop math because I've noticed that a too long break from math and we're reviewing too much the next fall. I try to find workbooks, games, extra supplements from Scholastic to keep up the math practice. I try to be done with all language arts by summer and just read during the break and talk about what we've read.

 

I take a few weeks off in Dec (the kids are usually doing xmas things anyway) and I take a week in the spring (usually around Easter) so I can clean and organize the house and get some adult things done. And then I usually lighten up a lot in July and Aug (except math and reading etc.) I don't mind a summer break but I don't like months of computer and tv marathons either. I need to keep my kids busy.

[nono]

We do not have to count days, so I build out 160 days which includes some combination of seatwork, projects and reading. The rest are field trips. I put the 160 days in a grid and check them off as we complete them. I don't let the fact that we have things scheduled get in the way of a good field trip. :) The grid helps me gauge how to evenly divide up the workload so that we're not overwhelmed with work towards the end of the year. We live in a summer resort town, with loads to do in the summer. We HAVE to be done on time in June. ;)

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

I don't know how many actual days/weeks we do. I know we go longer than Wyoming requires. I am one of those who like to finish books though. I know alot don't but if I buy it I am gonna do it all ;) We school year round, and take a week off every month-6 weeks. We usually do math on our weeks off, and occasionally another subject if we are 'behind' (read-- if I feel like kids have been slacking ;))

[redsquirrel]

I schedule 38 weeks. Those last couple weeks are pretty light though. We get through most subjects before the end of the year. As things get done I don't add anything extra in.

 

And, we don't take many breaks. We take maybe two weeks off around the winter holidays and that is it. When June rolls around, we are good and ready for a vacation.

[NittanyJen]

We school year round. As a ballpark estimate, 42-43 weeks of "serious" school work, by the time we take time off around holidays, spring break, a week off here and there in the summer or for travel etc.

 

You're right, a few extra weeks makes a big difference-- I don't sweat it if we need a day off now and then (ie, we declared the first warm day in March an official day off from school so we could play outdoors :D We probably accumulate about a week's worth of those types of days).

[brandigirl]

:D Year round we just finish up one thing and move onto the next one meaning my sister will finish her TT 4 this month and will just go onto TT5 even though she is not required.

[HomeScholar]

We school year round, but we officially use the standard school calendar. In the summer we run a lighter schedule and have lots of outdoor time.

[Dustybug]

We school year round as well. We take breaks as needed. During the summer, we do stray away from our "main" curriculum and do more unit study type learning.

[Shellers]

We are schooling year round.

[Mommee & Baba]

I plan between 36-38 weeks for each school year. We take a week off for each Christmas & spring break. All other breaks are only for a day or two as my kids get crazy after a few days off if they aren't busy. I spend the summer planning the new upcoming school year. Our summer is from June 9 - August 7.

[Ellie]

365 days. It begins January 1 and ends December 31. :)

[nukeswife]

The only way I can answer this, it goes until we're done with the stuff for the year. Usually it's pretty close to somewhere between 36 and 38 weeks.

[SuperDad]

We school year round. We do take off time when needed.

 

For example, I told the boys they could have yesterday and today off from schoolwork. That means they still had to do math and writing.

 

Year round we just finish up one thing and move onto the next one meaning my sister will finish her TT 4 this month and will just go onto TT5 even though she is not required.

 

These.

With six kids, I quickly found that it's not efficient for me to plan based on a traditional school year. So I don't.

[LucyStoner]

Year round with weeks off here and there for trips and camps and such.

[TheAutumnOak]

Our year this year will be 36 weeks...I am not sure for next year...We may do 42 weeks if I plan a 6 week summer session at the end of next year...I guess it will depend on whether or not we are forced to take more time off during the year...If we do go with a 42 week year, the last 6 weeks would be just one or two subjects...

 

ETA: DH works 48 weeks out of the year and always jokes that the boys should do the same :-)

[lillehei]

Year round We take time off at CHristmas and then a trip to see family in summer. We do take various other weeks or days off as needed. Ds is going to be starting SOTW next week and we have it scheduled for 43 weeks. We start something else when we end another. The kids tend to just turn to mush if we take a long break. It is really counter-productive for us to take the whole summer off.

[mommy5]

I plan 4 quarters ... 9 weeks each ... I leave 13 weeks for each term (so there are 20 days that are flexible or off days in those quarters). This is the first time I have done it like this. I did 3 twelve week terms last year and I didn't like the longer terms ... we do 180 days of school. With the new baby coming soon, we are looking to get finished probably in early March next year (started in early February this year) because I'm going to take a 6 week leave for the new baby and some other scheduled in vacation days around the holidays...

[WhatLight]

We also school year round. I love the flexibility it provides us, if we need to take some time off unexpedidly - we do. If we want to take a week-long trip to Florida (like we are in April), we do. If we want to go to the lake house in June we just go. And I don't have to worry about "making" up the lost time. I write out a complete 36 week schedule (as most curriculums follows that time length) and when we finish that, we just move right on to the next thing. My kids like to stay busy, they get bored too easily, and when they are bored the tv comes on. I have no desire for them to spend an entire summer watching tv. Plus taking months off at a time just doesn't work for us. We would spend so much time in September doing review of math facts and such that they had forgotten over the summer. When we finish one math level, it's right on to the next - no weeks worth of review needed for us!

[BoZeeCo's Mom]

We are kind of on the Euro system. Nice long breaks for Winter and Spring, and the month of August off completely.

[momma aimee]

i do roghtly 40 weeks. Aug 1 to May 31.

 

but this year we are moving in Aug so I am schooling till the end of June, and not planning to start till week 3 of Sept.

[8filltheheart]

I'm debating between 36 weeks (general California school year length) and 38 weeks. Sometimes a couple of extra weeks makes a BIG difference!

 

How long is your school year?

 

I schedule 34-35 5 days/wk full-length academic days. (so field trips, etc are not counted in our academic calendar even though we definitely do plenty of educational trips. THe length of their days depends on the grade level.)

 

FWIW, I personally need summer vacations to recover, plan, and prepare for the next school yr. I attempted yr round schooling 1 time when my dd was ice skating numerous hrs/week.......I cannot function w/o my time-off.

[Ester Maria]

35 weeks x 6 days.

[Karen in CO]

I "school" 172 official days. I don't count beyond that. We do math and reading year-round.

Edited March 16, 2012 by Karen in CO

[MinivanMom]

We always plan 37 weeks. We are in a state that requires both counting days and annual testing, so we do 36 weeks of learning and 1 week of testing. I try to start and end around the same time as our local schools, because it makes planning activities and time with friends much easier. Usually we take off a week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, and a week sometime in the spring.

[Homeschooling6]

36 week. By this I mean we hit the books and do all subjects (most days :D). Once we hit the 36th week it feels finished :). I like having a beginning and ending date.

 

We also school through the summer but with a much lighter load. Not all subjects everyday.

[nov05mama]

The only way I can answer this, it goes until we're done with the stuff for the year. Usually it's pretty close to somewhere between 36 and 38 weeks.

 

This. We school year round, but we 'start' in July and then just go til we finish. We are required to do the standard 180 days, which we make sure to hit. Initially, I planned out 36 weeks, but it will likely be about 40 weeks til we finish every single thing...I am thinking we may end up with June completely off...

[Aloha2U]

In theory, we school all year round. ;)

 

Our Year-at-a-Glance spans from the end of August to the end of August. It reflects all 52 weeks in the school year - 45 weeks of possible schooling (5 quarters x 9 weeks each, including summer) with a noted 7 weeks of mandatory vacation (essentially... 6 weeks on, 1 week off). That being said, most of our curriculum is completed within the first 36-ish weeks. We work at our core studies four days per week, memory work and Suzuki violin lessons with his instructor, library, and etc. on a fifth day.

 

I plan to keep our summer studies light, consisting of math games and possibly some CWPs, art and science experiments/projects that we didn't get to, anything that sparks our interest (e.g., constellations w/his new microscope), and lots of reading. It just so happens that, for reasons I won't go into detail about right now (OCD tendencies of wanting to cover correlated events at the same time, in chronological order :D), our VP Bible and History studies will extend into our summer this year (weeks 37-45).

 

Here's our current G2 Year-at-a-Glance.

 

HTH!

Edited March 16, 2012 by CMama

[Susan in Indiana]

We school from Labor Day to Memorial Day with days off as we need them. But we're learning all the time. :001_smile:

 

best,

Susan

[Classically Minded]

We also school year-round, taking breaks whenever we feel like it and taking most of the month of December off for Christmas.

[boscopup]

Year round here. When I first scheduled it out (with breaks), it ended up being 215 days. I've taken 2 extra sanity weeks off since then, so now it's 205 days. So that would be...41 weeks. All of my curriculum starts at different times (seriously, I'm not in the same week in ANYTHING), so it doesn't really matter how many weeks I end up with. I prefer to have at least 36 weeks. My cover school only requires 140 days in the school year, 160 days in the calendar year.

[ALB]

We go year-round, too. We start in July and go until June, taking breaks for trips (we travel a ton) or visitors. Our schedule is too unpredictable to plan out a certain number of days/ weeks since we are overseas and travel around so much. As long as we reach a minimum of 180, I'm okay, but I prefer to do more than that if we can.

[MissKNG]

We school year round with light summers. Also, during the summer, we usually stop with our regular curricula and work on completely different stuff. Our "grade level" year cooresponds with the public school year since I will have to report this coming fall.

[fraidycat]

I plan to go year-round (ish), taking breaks when we need them. PS summer break was way too long and boring for everyone. My hope is to not have more than 4 weeks off at one time for visiting family or vacation time. I think anything more than that and we will all be driving each other nuts, without a schedule and routine.

[mamatohaleybug]

I schedule 40 weeks. That puts me 4+ weeks beyond what the law requires. I just feel more comfortable with this schedule. We travel a lot and have many medical appts so some of our weeks might be 3 or 4 days long. In the end, it all works out. We take off most of June, all of July, the first week of August and a few weeks at Christmas. And then we travel whenever we like. :)

[violingirl]

I technically schedule 36-40 weeks, but we school year round. The other 12ish weeks give us room to follow rabbit trails and also time off for appointments and traveling. We also host most of my family's events that happen through the year at our house so we take time off if I need to prep for a get together that evening or something.

[mytwomonkeys]

i aim to do school from august through may, which is 36 weeks with typical breaks. however if we take more time off it can easily push us to the end of june. it just depends on how much time we take off. it has to equal 180 days.