If you school year-round...

[Hoot]

If you school year-round, do you do different short summer classes or do you just plow straight through from one year to the next?

 

For instance, do you do Year X work and then immediately start Year Y work in the summer. Or, do you finish Year X work, do something in-between, and then start Year Y work in the fall?

 

And, have you started compiling your summer school plans yet?

[*Lulu*]

We work on skill subjects constantly and just flow from one level into the next. For content subjects we utilize a 5 year spiral; we do take a break from content subjects several times during the year and I generally start the "new year" for our spirals each September.

[kbb]

X year completed in May....summer courseJune-Aug ....Y courses start after Labor Day.

[dbmamaz]

some things we just continue through the summer, like math. My older son got behind in math and tends to need more time, so that just goes straight through. but we often do fewer topics and something different. like one summer we did programming, one summer we did a lot of hands-on science.

[FairProspects]

Your ds is older, so I'm not really sure how that would work for High School credits. You may want to cross-post to the HS board. For us, since most of our resources are unleveled the grade is largely irrelevant, we just move onto the next book whenever the previous book is completed.

[Ellie]

If you school year-round, do you do different short summer classes or do you just plow straight through from one year to the next?

 

For instance, do you do Year X work and then immediately start Year Y work in the summer. Or, do you finish Year X work, do something in-between, and then start Year Y work in the fall?

 

And, have you started compiling your summer school plans yet?

 

 

Well, see, if you do year-round, you don't think of it as doing different summer classes, or plowing through. That would assume that the school year started in the fall, and there's no reason for that to be the case.

 

Our school year started January 1 and ended December 31, not September through August. We took off a couple of weeks in the spring, a couple of weeks in late August/early September, Thanksgiving through the middle of January, and other random times as needed for mental health days, lol. I *promoted* the dc in the fall, just to keep Sunday school teachers, sports teams, and grandparents happy, but I moved us on to the next thing whenever we finished with what we were doing.

[Mommy_of_4]

Nothing changes for us during the summer. We just keep on doing what we are doing and move onto the next level when done with the current.

[Hoot]

Your ds is older, so I'm not really sure how that would work for High School credits. You may want to cross-post to the HS board. For us, since most of our resources are unleveled the grade is largely irrelevant, we just move onto the next book whenever the previous book is completed.

 

 

Honestly, my plan is to do things in the summer that don't really matter as far as high school credits go, are something different or fun, or are things that are simply meant to keep certain skills up to par. For instance, my plan for this summer is:

 

How to be a Super-Star Student (April - mid-June)

How to Read a Book & companion guide (mid-June - early fall)

Movies As Literature (April - early fall)

Apologia Physical Science (April - early fall) *This is the only one that would count as a full class and we're only doing it so that he can move on to Biology at co-op in the fall. It won't matter as far as high school credits go though since this particular science is not required for high school graduation. It is actually considered an 8th grade course.

Math - (June - early fall) More than likely we'll do a review of Algebra concepts using the Key to... books before moving on to Geometry in the fall.

 

Plus a reading list.

 

I'm just wondering how others handle summer when schooling year round.

[RoundAbout]

Well, see, if you do year-round, you don't think of it as doing different summer classes, or plowing through. That would assume that the school year started in the fall, and there's no reason for that to be the case.

 

 

Totally agree.

 

Unless you have other children in PS or a spouse who works for the school system, there's not much reasons to consider summer any different than fall, winter, or spring.

[bluemongoose]

We do a little of both. Math, handwriting, writing, foreign language, logic, reading, and art we do year round. When one level finishes we just move to the next.

 

With History, Geography, Science, and Phonics we go until it is done for the year and then play games, do fun labs and keep reading for the summer. This gives us the ability to lighten the load a touch as where we live the summer is the only easy time to be outside. The rest of the year is dreary, wet, and cold so we are more willing to hunker down and work hard during that time.

[happypamama]

We finish the year's curriculum in May or June (and officially promote everyone to the next grade; they like that finality) and have off for a few weeks, until the beginning of July. July 1 is when my state allows me to count work and days for that year, so we start the year's work then. There's no special summer work. We do full work in the summer (though I take a few weeks to get up to a full schedule), and we work until we've finished what I want us to finish, with breaks whenever needed.

[GoVanGogh]

Totally agree.

 

Unless you have other children in PS or a spouse who works for the school system, there's not much reasons to consider summer any different than fall, winter, or spring.

I agree with the "Totally agree." ;)

 

We start our school years in January and end December 31.

For skill-based subjects, we just keep on moving forward. We may start a new book in February or in November. It makes no difference when we move up a level, so long as we are moving forward.

For extra subjects (science, art, history), I decide what I want to cover and how long it will take, then divide it up over the year. Some things may be done in one term, others in two terms while something else may be spread over the whole year.

I don't view summer any differently when I plan out our school year. We don't have as many daily outside classes in summer, but may have one or two week-long camps. Number of school days per month/term still tend to even out in the end.

[daniv]

My friend does year round. They don't do summer any different than the rest of the year. Instead, they take off time here and there throughout the year as needed. Like, if they are sick and need some time to recuperate or if someone comes to visit or if daddy has vacation time, etc. I plan on doing it the same way. I really think that makes much more sense than taking 3 months off in the summer. I just started homeschooling, so I don't have any personal experience with it yet, but it seems logical.

[Clarkd]

In one respect I agree with the other posts. We don't track the school calendar, we switch to the next grade in each curric as they are ready. However, our activities change. Gymnastics is Sept. -June, same as swimming lessons. In summer we go to a nature center 1 week day camp and we have mini sessions at the Y of sports they want to try. Last summer it was ice skating and soccer.

[Aurelia]

We keep the skill subjects going, though we may use different curricula once we finish one book, like switching from WWE to a creative writing course, or doing a literature unit from MBtP as a change of pace. I move Ariel's work up to the next level when she is ready, whether that occurs in January, June, or October, and she may be ready to move up in one subject before she is ready in another (like she is finishing 3rd grade math, but has been doing 4th grade English since October).

[Kaleidoscope]

We take off nice big chunks of time in the spring and fall so we don't feel like we are plowing through and we don't feel like we immediately do the next thing. Now if we happen to finish a curriculum in May or June or July I don't start a new one right away. I'll do something different. My kids like "starting" a new year the same time as their PS friends so we officially start new stuff in the fall.

[Hoot]

The biggest reasons why we keep loosely with the school calendar would be that I actually do work part-time for a Christian school and DS attends co-op classes for certain subjects. Next year he may join in with a couple of classes at the Christian school where I work as well since they offer an a la carte option. I love how everyone does exactly what works for them though. :)

[brla]

We always just continue on with our main subjects. Electives tend to change and, sometimes, science, since the seasons play a major roll in a few of the things the kids can do. We also do interest-based electives, that the kids chose, every 6-9 weeks (many of these end up extending over several 6-week periods).

 

We have 4 day school weeks for all subjects, 5th day being for music lessons and anything the independent students didn't finish the rest of the week. We tend to do crafts the 5th day too (student led/delight directed crafts).

 

We school for 6-9 weeks straight and then will take 1-3 weeks off (it always depends on if we have a trip coming up, company or a holiday). If we have sick days, then we are sick. I don't worry about it as it'll all work out in the end. In our state we count hours instead of days, so we ALWAYS have well over 1000 hours.

 

We've only taken summer off one time and it was terrible! We were all ready to start back to the year-round schedule. It just really helps us to keep structure in our home.

 

As far as planning - YES, I have 10 weeks from now to have the new plan ready. Fortunately, I know WHAT I'm teaching, since we just pick up where we left off. It's what I'm teaching it with that I've had to reasearch - this tends to change in my house based on the kids needs and sometimes their interests. So, we just re-evaluate about every 6 months or so and keep on moving forward.

[Ariston]

Unless you have other children in PS or a spouse who works for the school system, there's not much reasons to consider summer any different than fall, winter, or spring.

 

There is for us up here in the cold north :) Summer is the only time we can go to the lake or swim in the river or just play outside all day, so school just never gets done. We have to build up Vita D stores to last through the long winter :)

 

I do try to do math and reading regularly though...

Elena

[Ecclecticmum]

We flow from one to the next. I don't really plan anything much anymore either.

 

We stop for holidays & festivities, and really hot weather. On holidays, we just do crafts & such. Christmas & hot weather usually go hand in hand here, so dead middle of summer (xmas) is our main break. Its very easy where we are to get heat exhaustion/dehydration etc, so we just take it easy.

 

Should we be feeling a bit of burnout, we remove "extras" for a bit and jiggle the schedule around (sometimes just the fact of knowing mondays is this, tuesdays is that, is enough to cause boredom). Or we'll stop and do a random fun mini unit study (we currently use Earth*School for that, but Amanda Bennets stuff like Popcorn, Cookies, Pizza, would work well for older children), so anytime we need a little pick me up we'll do that.

 

If we weren't "us" i.e. wasn't as hot during christmas, we didn't have all the random sick days, and were more of a tightly oiled schduling machine who just school year round cause we can (thats a lot of if's lol) then I might do something like your other option, stop grade 4 (or whatever) then do a unit study for the hols, then grade 5. Instead we just random add them throughout the year.

 

HTH x

[Ruthie in MS]

We don't do anything different for summer. We finish when we finish. Our summers here are way too hot to get out and do anything. Most of our time off is taken Christmas, spring and summer so it all works out in the wash. Right now we are in their respective "grades" in language arts and phonics and a semester behind in math (for both dd).

[Mama2two]

We keep going with core subjects, but our science changes to a nature study psecific topic for a lot of time outside during spring/summer

[stm4him]

WELL, my IDEA was to get the majority of our schoolwork done from mid-August to mid-April (our CC year) and then have most of our core subjects shift to review for the summer. Our CC content subjects would be over so then we would do SOTW and/or VP for history and some other science program. But last year we had a cross state move and so we only got to finish our regular school year and our science. We did no extra history :-( And this year we have cancer and a new baby so we are way behind and may have to continue core subjects into the summer. CC will still end so we hopefully should still be able to do extra history. I'm undecided about summer science for this year at this point. But my absolute goal is to be ready to start completely with a new grade level for each kiddo by mid-August. We are about 1/4 of the way into our school year and I would have liked to have been like more than half way done by now......

[boscopup]

We end one school year at the end of May and begin the next at the end of June or beginning of July. We change skill subject levels as we need to throughout the year, though I expect that wouldn't be as much of an issue in high school (I hope!). Content subjects are planned for the whole school year, so that starts anew in June or July. With breaks, we only end up with about 4 extra weeks than we would have if taking the summer off.

 

I like schooling through summer when it's too hot to play outside, and then we can take off during nice weather in spring and fall.

[MEVmom]

So far summers have been lighter but not nothing...so I keep doing math facts, catechism, poetry. Last summer we read about and listened to various composers. But I'm still kind of tweaking our yearly plan as this is only our second formal year. This summer we are moving so things will be a little strange.

[2_girls_mommy]

Haven't read the others. But this is our general plan:

 

Start the new school year Aug. 1st (or roundabouts..) with as much new material as possible. I aim to get the bulk of everything completed by June 1st.

 

Then in June they have out of the house camps, VBS, swim lessons, and general summer fun going on. Around those schedules I assess and we finish up or continue on with what needs to be done. This is generally math and history. They do the summer reading program at the library and bookstores. If we finished a spelling workbook we do not start the new one in June. I hold off until Aug. 1st.

 

Thenwe do take the entire month of July off. This is when we go out of town to visit family, do 4th of JUly celebrations and whatnot. We need the break and the chance to recharge before starting up at the end of the month.

 

 

The first week or two of Aug. we are sometimes still wrapping up last year's work in some subjects. We pick up where left off or review a bit before jumping into the new books. We generally don't finish a vol. of SOTW until mid. Sept. So even though this was an ancients year, we were still wrapping up moderns in Aug. We didn't actually start ancients and logic stage history until around Oct.

[MeganW]

We just keep the skills topics going year-round. When we finish one level, we pick up the next.

 

For the content, we finished up what we hadn't gotten through during the normal school year, then picked up random things to study. Last summer we did the Olympics, and then a unit on birds based on Burgess Bird book.

[nov05mama]

We end one school year at the end of May and begin the next at the end of June or beginning of July. We change skill subject levels as we need to throughout the year, though I expect that wouldn't be as much of an issue in high school (I hope!). Content subjects are planned for the whole school year, so that starts anew in June or July. With breaks, we only end up with about 4 extra weeks than we would have if taking the summer off.

 

I like schooling through summer when it's too hot to play outside, and then we can take off during nice weather in spring and fall.

 

 

This is us as well. We begin our school year in July (usually the first Monday) and we work through May. We take the month of June off as well as other random weeks throughout the year. As far as the curriculum itself though, we just move as necessary at whatever point in the year we are at. On paper, though, our school year runs from June-May.

[Mom2OandE]

We are planning on working through the summer in a lite way. We will continue with math and reading for ds as he needs it. We are also going to work on cursive this summer. For dd I will likely have her continue on with math and throw in keyboarding. I want to do a fun book club and may invite some of their friends. I'm thinking either Harry Potter or an Around The World Theme to get them ready for world geography next year.

[serendipitous journey]

We do skills year-round. Our summer load was lighter last year, because I added swimming and Lego classes that are summer-specific. Our math, spelling, handwriting & cetera are pretty much year-round with the exception what where Button was BELOW grade level in first, I worked specifically to bring him up to 2nd grade level by the start of his official second grade, September of this year.

 

I still am working out what our best curriculum options are for this child, so it's always a bit crazy and but I make my biggest changes in September and January of each year.

[Ewe Mama]

We keep moving forward with whatever we are using/doing.

[Maela]

We go straight through with no breaks or special summer work. When the kids finish one level of something, they start the next.

 

This is what I'm planning on doing (this is our first year hsing).

 

When we finish volume one of SotW (whenever that may be), I plan to take a month off from everything but math to do a unit on Little House in the Big Woods. I'm more excited about it than my daughter. :-) Otherwise, I'm planning on just keeping things going...

[Ailey]

We have a much lighter and more relaxed school schedule in the summer, because Dh has more flexible hours at work, and Ds does some camps and summer sports. We finish up science, history and a few other things in early June, but keep math, writing, Latin and German going 2-3x per week unless he's in camp. He usually does some fun projects with his dad or finds something to keep himself busy, but I have a few "unit studies" or projects on hand for slower weeks. We start in September with our new school year and about 50% new curriculum.

[FlyingMOm]

We flow from one year to the next mostly. We finish our year at the end of June and start a new year at the beginning of July. The only thing we go light on in the summer is Science. We continue on with our regular Language Arts, Math & History. No Science in the summer and we also do a month of "Christmas School"- nothing at all but Language Arts & Math so that we have time to do our Advent activities, fun Christmas crafts & baking, coloring, visiting neighbors, etc.

[Julie Smith]

We just keep going. We flow from one thing to another.

 

If Daddy is at work, then it's a school day (Unless you are into a really really good game). Every day is a light school day.

 

Every night, (weekend included) we do reading.