Year-round ... do you prefer 4 day school weeks?

[mommy5]

Do you prefer to school 4 days on and one day off? Does that help you keep organized and get more things done on the days you are schooling? Do you prefer longer breaks off or do you like the consistency of one day off each week. I was thinking of doing 4 day work weeks ... 6 weeks on and 1 week off through the school year and then taking a longer break around Christmas. I'm just not sure what would work the best. I NEED scheduled breaks or I would never take a break and get worn out and burnt out ... I have a toddler that gets into mischief and a baby who is starting to become mobile ... trying to figure out which option makes more sense for a mom in this position. (The other option for me was 6 weeks on (5 day week) and 2 weeks off until December when I would take the month off).

[VeritasMama]

I did a 4 day week when my sons were in a homeschool physical fitness class at the YMCA on Friday mornings. I would run errands while they were in class, and then the afternoon they would clean their rooms while the baby napped and I caught up on housework. It worked well, because we weren't spending our entire Saturday doing housework, we could actually do something fun as a family. This year I tried to shoot for a 4 day week, but with a baby and toddler, I'm having a hard time fitting it all into 4 days as my attention is not always focused. We are going to take a month off starting next week, I did this once before a few years ago, and it helps a lot. I like taking the last week before Christmas and then a few weeks after Christmas off, instead of the whole month of December. I pretty much follow the Christmas break schedule I had in college. I'm not sure if I get more done during a long break, but it sure does help my mental health :)

 

HTH!

[Ellie]

I scheduled my big breaks first--Thanksgiving through the middle of January, a couple of weeks in the spring around Easter, a couple of weeks in late August/early September--then did 3-4 days a week the rest of the time, rather than trying to do a certain number of weeks off and on. I felt free to take off other random times as needed.

[UrbanSue]

This year we have been trying (and so far it has been working) of schooling 5-6 weeks on, one week off. But with two weeks off at Christmas and our summer is very chopped up with LOTS of travel so we just fit in weeks whenever we are at home. I find the 5-6 week stretch to be about my limit. Scheduling the breaks in advance keeps me motivated through all my scheduled weeks and then allows me to enjoy a week off regularly without feeling like a guilty slacker. But next year I think we will take a longer break at Christmas--at least another week before. Our official start to this year wasn't until October, for various reasons, so I didn't really have that luxury this time around.

[Mommy to monkeys]

I plan 4 days a week. . .but it's 4 days on and 3 days off. ;-)

We take breaks whenever we get company or go see family. . .birthdays. . .holidays etc. We've had so much of this, that we're a little behind.

As we're approaching the end of our 2nd quarter, we're picking up the pace to 5 days a week to stay on track.

[Heidi]

I school 4 days a week for 36 weeks. I know that is only 144 days, but we still do a full year's worth of work in 144 days. I school M, Tu, and Th, F. Wednesday the kids go to a co-op, so it still counts as "school" on paper, but not for me as the teacher. I take two weeks off at christmas, a week off at thanksgiving, about a month off during the summer, and roughly school six weeks on/1 week off throughout the rest of the year.

[Ewe Mama]

We only take time off as needed for sickness, appointments, major holidays. We like to stay in our regular routine Monday through Friday with only the weekends off. Our work days are fairly short, though. We are usually finished by 1:00, so we have plenty of time for planning and projects.

[Julie Smith]

We do year round. Our days are very light. The basic rule here is, "If Daddy is at work, we do school". I find we don't need a break since we keep every day light.

[Crimson Wife]

We do shorter days, year-round and most Saturdays depending on how much work they've completed M-F. My kids don't have the attention span for longer days so we do more of them.

[Halcyon]

We do 5 days, about 220-240 days a year. The boys get about 3-4 weeks off in the summer to go to summer camp while I plan for the coming year. It's not year round, but it's more than a typical school year. Over the last couple of months, Friday has been "Project Day" where the boys work independently, or with some help, on projects of interest to them. They have loved it, but I am not sure we will be able to complete what I want to complete if we continue doing this. We seem to really need 5 days. OTOH, I am loathe to give it up as the boys love it, and it has opened up new avenues of interest (Thai cooking, anyone?)

 

So I am torn.

[SorrelZG]

Typically I don't do four day weeks unless DH is home. We just can't be trusted with regular three day weekends .. or large breaks for that matter. :glare: We're just trouble.

[justme824]

We go year round, but I don't really count days, just make sure progress is being made as each week passes. Typically we school 3-4 days per week. One day each week is reserved for a day long class (if I had to count I would count this as a school day). The optional 4th day of school really depends on how much we got done on the other three days. It is all toddler dependent really :) I like to keep Friday (our optional day) open for friends/grandmas/nature/trips - those type of things, so I cross my fingers for three good days each week.

 

As for longer breaks, I find we tend to take off Thanksgiving-Christmas. Everything else we take off tends to be for travel. If I feel like we need a break I schedule that in as I go along. I do understand the need to schedule them. If I had to I'd probably still take the longer holiday break (it fits us well) but go 5-6 weeks on with a 1 week break the rest of the year. I'd fudge this a bit once I knew travel dates and such.

[NASDAQ]

We do six days a week. I think it's always better to do a smaller amount every day than a larger amount on fewer days.

[Guest Lauren80]

4 days is much better, I prefer less days and more hours, it's always better to have some totally free days to do stuff.

[Heidi]

Russellester has been reported.

[Ellie]

Let me also say that Fridays was always our cleaning day--all the laundry, dust the furniture, move the furniture and vacuum, clean the bathrooms, everything. I wanted weekends free to goof off with Mr. Ellie, and for everyone to have clean undies on Sunday morning for church, and for Monday to be the "Ahhhhhh....back to normal!" day instead of having to also clean or do laundry. On Monday mornings we could just...get up and mosey out to the kitchen (aka school room).

[windmillmarie]

We've schooled year round--for 13 years. I've tried it all. Over time, a set schedule became unnecessary. We'd work until a break was needed, be it a day or a week. It worked out wonderfully. We took family trips when the weather was good, and worked through the miserably hot days of summer in Texas.

Would you consider year round? There would be more breaks this way.

 

 

 

This is what I imagine for myself. I am afterscholing year round, but I am of the mind that I'd like to integrate learning into daily living. If given the chance to homeschool, I'd like to just have some general goals for completion mapped out so we could be spontaneous. I would probably be doing things on weekends too because their father would want to participate and he works M-F. I think we have to do 180 days in our state, so if you just did year-round, you'd cover that eventually.

[lea1]

I school 4 days a week for 36 weeks. I know that is only 144 days, but we still do a full year's worth of work in 144 days. I school M, Tu, and Th, F. Wednesday the kids go to a co-op, so it still counts as "school" on paper, but not for me as the teacher. I take two weeks off at christmas, a week off at thanksgiving, about a month off during the summer, and roughly school six weeks on/1 week off throughout the rest of the year.

 

We have done something similar to this, without the regular breaks every six weeks, although I might consider that. I am still trying to find what works best for us. We are on our break now but we waited too long for a break and I was definitely feeling burned out the last couple of weeks.

 

We school 4 days a week and go to co-op on Fridays. I count co-op as school since my sons are taking P.E., Spanish, Art and Drama. We fit everything else in on the other days, although our days are sometimes longer than I would like. We need to work on being more efficient with our time.

[sbgrace]

We've schooled year round--for 13 years. I've tried it all. Over time, a set schedule became unnecessary. We'd work until a break was needed, be it a day or a week. It worked out wonderfully. We took family trips when the weather was good, and worked through the miserably hot days of summer in Texas.

Would you consider year round? There would be more breaks this way.

 

This is what we do as well. We actually end up with more days than PS kids but yet have so much flexibility. I don't know if it will work long term here, we're just 4 years in, but so far it has been a good approach.

[MrsBanjoClown]

This is our first year, but we started on July 9. We are pretty much schooling year-round with a few breaks. We took off a week in October, and most of Thanksgiving week. We are on our Christmas break now, but ds8 is still doing math every day this week. I am planning to be on break until January 7. We will probably not finish this school year until around June 14. We will finish some subjects early, but history will take the longest since we have 42 weeks scheduled (22 left at this point). We will probably then start the new school year on July 8. I have done a few 4 day weeks, but we seem to need 5 days to work everything in. I don't see how we would be able to take longer breaks at all if we just did 4 day weeks (or if we did, we wouldn't be finishing our books this year).

[GoVanGogh]

We've schooled year round--for 13 years. I've tried it all. Over time, a set schedule became unnecessary. We'd work until a break was needed, be it a day or a week. It worked out wonderfully. We took family trips when the weather was good, and worked through the miserably hot days of summer in Texas.

Same here.

We have homeschooled 6.5 years. I started with a plan of how we would take breaks, but now we just school when we are able and take a break when needed.

I think nothing of starting a school session on a Thursday or only schooling two days in a given week. In fact, we are starting 2013 school year on Thursday, January 3rd.

But in the heat of summer - when we have fewer outside activiites - we normally do school five days a week.

I do like to take 3-4 weeks off in December, depending on where/how Thanksgiving and Christmas fall.

I know to take a few days off around the 4th of July and Halloween because of late nights and too much sugar.

We get our school work done, which is my only concern.

[Mommy_of_4]

We do 5 days a week and just take off whenever we need to or feel like it. I never schedule breaks.

[Halcyon]

Let me also say that Fridays was always our cleaning day--all the laundry, dust the furniture, move the furniture and vacuum, clean the bathrooms, everything. I wanted weekends free to goof off with Mr. Ellie, and for everyone to have clean undies on Sunday morning for church, and for Monday to be the "Ahhhhhh....back to normal!" day instead of having to also clean or do laundry. On Monday mornings we could just...get up and mosey out to the kitchen (aka school room).

 

 

 

I am leaning more and more towards this. I LOVE having a clean house come Saturday morning, so that instead of cleaning I can just hang out with the family. I may have to make this a more permanent change. I guess I am worried we wont get enough done. But the kids are generally happy to have longer days, so maybe we should go with that.

[Ohmomjacquie]

this is our first year on a year round schedule and LOVE it. We usually do 3 weeks of school and then take a week off. For christmas we took most of december (schooled the first week) and will start back in january.

 

The curriculum we use is set up for 4day weeks and one day is nothing other than reading and math. I really like it this way because it makes things more flexible. If we have a busy day during the week I can make that day our reading/math day or just motve those lessons and double up another day,WE've tried 5 day weeks and just not a fan of them.

[serendipitous journey]

well, this doesn't seem germane to the OP (or the other posters!) but for the past year or so we've been year round, 6 days/week, no weeks off but Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas and Christmas Eve off. Plus over the summer there were some very light days to allow for swimming, Lego class ... I have an incredibly intense 7yo, and he does not do well with more than one day/week off his school schedule. Whenever I drift from this we have real behavior challenges. That said, I'm totally burnt out and trying to figure how to get some free time this holiday season while keeping our schedule up ... I expect that by the time he's 9 or so, we can do something more normal.

[boscopup]

We school year round, and I have planned breaks - 3 weeks in June, 2-3 weeks at Christmas, a week at Thanksgiving, a week whenever we plan a big family vacation (last two years have been in September), and then a week wherever it looks good to put one. It's roughly 6 on, 1 off, but not exactly.

 

I do 5 days per week right now, BUT... I am contemplating switching to 4 day weeks. My DH works 9/80s (9 days, 80 hours), so he gets every other Friday off. School is shot if DH is home, plus we like to use that day off for him to do fun stuff with the boys. So it would just make sense to have Fridays off in general. It wouldn't be hard to do. I also like Ellie's idea of having Friday be a cleaning day. The only problem I might have is that by Friday, I'm tired and don't want to clean. :lol: I'm usually best at cleaning on Monday, but I'm also best at schooling on Monday, and schooling trumps cleaning.

 

If I did 4 day weeks, I'd need to do more weeks in the year. I currently average about 40 weeks (200 days). 40 weeks of 4 days would only be 160 days, and while my cover school allows that, I really prefer 180 days as my minimum, and I'd rather not have to do 45 weeks, since that gives me only 7 weeks of break time, and I usually need 3 weeks in December and 3 weeks between school years.

 

So... we'll see. Maybe I could do "light Fridays", where only the few things that really need 180 days would get done, and everything else can be done in 4 days. That would be doable.

[arghmatey]

I do not prefer a four-day week.

 

We enjoy working on each sector of our life a bit each day--spirituality, family contributions, health, lessons, and fun.

[ChandlerMom]

We school year round and every day (7 days a week, but at least 2 of those days are very light). Learning is just part of our daily lifelong activity and it makes for: 1) no Monday morning angst, 2) shorter days, and 3) no stress over having time to complete things.

 

That said, we don't do the same grid every day and I'm not teaching a full load every day which helps with burn out. For example, my 9yo's math consists of 3-4 days of instruction in "new" math topics (algebra and challenge math), 1-2 days of "fun math" with her siblings (mobius strips one day, yesterday we drew out math facts on a printed out clock face), and beyond that she's responsible for completing 3 pages a week in a 5th grade level workbook to keep up her skills in fractions/decimals/etc.

 

We take breaks as needed, but usually not for more than a few days. I just find it takes too much effort to get momentum going again. Or I should say, I find if WE take a break from schooling then *I* don't really get a break (since the kids get antsy and require more from me), so if *I* need a break or am burning out, I give them more self-directed work for a couple days or find some science videos for them to watch or new books so that *I* actually can sit and sip some coffee or relax for an hour. I do NOT get that if THEY are on break! :rolleyes:

[Guest ndemmy92]

At DePaul University in Chicago, it is for the most part standard that each student partake in four day school weeks. The exceptions to this are if you take a science or language class. I find that the four day work week allows me sufficient time to get everything done in a timely and orderly manner. However, it does have its drawbacks, as I spend a vast majority of my time out of class and some materials within out of mind. You can find articles about topics such as this and others on a website called Parents and Colleges, an online resources for incoming freshman and their parents.

 

Here is the link:

 

http://parentsandcolleges.com