School Calendar

[sflood]

When do you generally start your school year? Do you school all 5 days per week? Do you have any breaks during the year?

I'm trying to decide what I want to do next year, this year we started in August, but I think I may want to start earlier. In my state we are required 180days in a twelve month period.

[Parrothead]

We start the day after Labor Day. We have a 2 family days in October, Halloween, a full week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, and Holy Week off. We finish the first Friday of June.

[Ellie]

When do you generally start your school year? Do you school all 5 days per week? Do you have any breaks during the year?

I'm trying to decide what I want to do next year, this year we started in August, but I think I may want to start earlier. In my state we are required 180days in a twelve month period.

 

 

Our school year began January 1 and ended December 31...just like the real year. :D

 

For the sake of group activities that are based on children's grade levels (Sunday school, sports, etc.), I always listed my dc for those activities based on their birthdays and the cut-off day in my state.

 

We took off a couple of weeks around Easter (I always get spring fever), late August/early September, and Thanksgiving through about the middle of January. We also took off random mental health days (grandparents visiting, mid-week trip to Disneyland in April, etc.). :D

 

We didn't do Official School Stuff every day, but I counted every day as Official School, regardless of what our days actually looked like. Practically speaking, we did four days a week, year-round (Friday we cleaned house and did all the laundry).

[SebastianCat]

We start math and English/LA the first week of July, start the rest of school the first week in August. We take a week off for Thanksgiving, two weeks off for Christmas, and one week in March for Spring Break. We finish around mid-May.

 

I like our schedule because we roughly follow the public schools, except we start earlier and finish earlier. We also time our Spring Break so it's NOT the same week as PS, so the parks, attractions, and beaches aren't as crowded. But we get a break during the summer - which I need - and which allows me to plan for the school year.

 

I think if you ask 50 homeschoolers to share their schedule, you'll get 50 different answers! :)

[Mommie_Jen]

We start the first week of July and will run to the end of April. That gives us plenty over our 180 we need. This year we've generally just taken a day or two off when needed except for Christmas break. May/June will be very light, just doing a little bit a few times a week, then start again in July. That's my plan anyway.

[boscopup]

We start somewhere around the end of a June and go until the end of May (same end date as public schools here). We take breaks for Thanksgiving, Christmas, family vacation (September sometime), and a couple other breaks as needed. I try to school 6-9 weeks at a time, then break. We could have any 210 days, but usually end up with 200 (due to random sanity or nice weather breaks). We school 5 days per week, but every other Friday is light or no school due to DH being off work. That started two months ago when he changed jobs, so I'll plan for it better next year. We can usually squeeze a week's worth of stuff in 4 days anyway.

[MinivanMom]

I always think in terms of weeks rather than days. We do 36 weeks of real schoolwork and then 1 week of standardized testing for state requirements. We do 5 day weeks, but Fridays are generally lighter. I try to start in early August, so that we can finish a full semester before Christmas. Usually we take off a week at Thanksgiving, 2-3 weeks at Christmas, and 1-2 weeks for vacations during the year. We finish by the end of May and always complete more than 185 days. Then we take June and July off for downtime, camps, and time by the pool.

[skeeterbug]

The ps year in Australia starts the end of January, so ps just started the middle of this week. We are starting Monday. School years are 40 weeks here, with two week breaks between terms and about 5-6 weeks at summer. We don't follow the school terms since we like to take vacations and field trips while everyone else is in school. I know many hs families do follow the school terms.

 

I've found a good schedule for us is roughly six weeks on, one week off. This gives us a nice long school year, and I don't have to worry about taking the odd day or week off. We adjust for vacations, illnesses, etc. This year we are having a baby so I expect to take a few weeks off then. After six weeks I am ready for a break from teaching! This worked well for us last year so I plan to keep it going this year.

[Walking-Iris]

Mid August--a bit of a break around holidays (the long weekend for Tgiving and about a week or two, whatever I need, at Xmas)---a week for Easter--to end of June. July and some of August summer break.

[chicagoshannon]

It varies every year. This year we started the beginning of July and will be done by the end of April. We took sometime off inSeptember, 2 weeks at Christmas (was going to be 3 weeks but we had an unexpected week off due to illness in Oct.),and will have a week off in Feb.

 

Right now I'm trying to decide if I want to take all of May, June, and part of July off or take 2 weeks or so off and then start our new year mid May. We would then take the last week of June-mid July off.

[myfunnybunch]

We loosely follow our public school schedule, except we don't take all of the furlough days and extra holidays. We start the Monday after Labor Day. We take a two week winter break (ps takes 2-1/2), a week-long spring break, and finish a week before public schools get out so that my boys can go to a week of Grandpa Camp.

 

We used to follow a 4-day academic schedule, leaving Fun Fridays for field trips and projects. We still swim and visit the library on Friday mornings, but ds12's academics have ramped up this year, so we follow a 5-day/week schedule, with the younger two on a light schedule on Mondays.

 

We do light school in the summer: A little math, lots of reading, and we're usually finishing history because we spend extra time on the topics we enjoy.

 

Our state does not require us to keep track of the number of days, so I'm not sure how many school days we have each year.

 

Cat

[Χά�ων]

A circle has no beginning.

[mschickie]

We start our main book work about mid August. This year we took 3 weeks off at Christmas (usually at least 2). December is filled with lots of field trips and days off too. We will go straight through (with the occasional day here or there) until mid May. I like to have the year done before we go to conference at the end of May.

[NotSoObvious]

Beginning of August-mid May with several weeks off for trips. This year we are doing 30 official, full weeks of school, meaning I divided all our curriculum into 30 weeks. During the summer we keep going with math and spelling.

[Guest Metis]

We go all year; I record keep from august to the end of june for the DOE because I have to. But it's really all year long. And we do something almost every day, although some days are much lighter than others. But, because of this I have no problem with taking stretches of time completely off whenever we need too!

[TheApprentice]

We school 4 weeks/ off 1 week. We also take Thanksgiving week off and 3 week in December (the week before Christmas, Christmas week and the week after Christmas). This schedule has us finishing the 2nd week of June and then we start back up the 2nd week of July.

[Heidi]

I usually start beginning of August. I take a week off for Thanksgiving, two weeks for Christmas, and for the rest of the year school 6 weeks on, 1 week off, and adjust for vacations that come up. I usually end up with about a month break between years. I school 5 days a week.

[North Coast School]

We usually school all year, with most of July off for camps and vacation, two off weeks at Christmas, and two weeks off at Easter. My older child is learning delayed and needs to keep up with school work year round or she regresses too much. She is in PS this year, but will homeschool over the summer.

[jujsky]

We usually start part-time in August, with my goal being that we have 2 full weeks done by the time we start back up full-time in September. We are usually done sometime in June. This year I've decided to experiment with an almost year-round schedule -- at least with spelling, Russian, typing, and math. They always read at night so I'm not worried about keeping up in literature. Once we're done the rest of our subjects for the school year, we will probably do those I mentioned at least 2-3 times/week. I feel they lose a lot in math, we started late with Sequential Spelling (I don't like that as 4th graders they're on the first book, but I felt it was best to start at the beginning) and I know they will lose so much Russian that they'll be hurting themselves if they don't keep up with it. If that works out, I might make the plunge the year after and do full year-round schooling with more breaks dispersed throughout the year.

[elegantlion]

We school 6 weeks on, 1 week off (more at Christmas). We start early August and go through the end of May. We end up with 36-37 weeks of school.