Do you school 180 days? or More?

[TreasuresFromHeaven]

We school 180 day a year. I have the school days planned out as well as our days off. I have my lessons planned so that I know exactly what we are doing each day and if we miss a day, it throws our schedule off because we have to make that up so that we stick with the 180 days. I feel like our school days are so full that we don't have time for anything else. It is school, chores, meals etc and then the day is over. I have no flexibility. If we want to go to the park, I have to work that into our schedule.

I know there are some that school more than 180 days and they just go with the flow. They pick up the next day where they left off the day before. If it takes 12 months to get thru math rather than 9 months, that is fine. But I can't seem to wrap my type A mind around this. How do you gauge if you are on track or behind? How do you keep from getting too lazy and not getting much school done? (I am always afraid of this for myself)

How do you do school? 180 days? More? Less?

I would love your input because I feel in bondage to my current schedule and I want to be more flexible, I just don't know how.

Jessica

[Kathryn]

I divide our work into 180 days on a schedule. When we've done everything I listed for one day, that gets checked off. When we've done it all, we're done for the year.

[Brooketopia]

Our state requires 180 days, I plan for about 200--that gives me twenty days of leeway for illness, interruptions, etc. I am not a go-with-the-flow girl, and this is how it works best for us. We tend to get ahead in subjects, which then tricks my brain into relaxing and "allowing" us to have a little more fun here and there without freaking out.

 

I also only have the regular subjects scheduled for Monday through Thursday. Friday is a fun day of scouts, art, music appreciation and nature hikes. It also can be used for make-up work or field trips—I don’t get bent out of shape too bad if we lag behind in our art curriculums, the kids are always willing to do extra art if the need arises.

 

But yeah, I understand feeling enslaved; and I’ve tried, at times, to “loosen up†about it—but the loosening up is just more stressful, so I go with what works for me.

[Laura Corin]

I used to do about 39 weeks a year. This is more or less the UK standard and adds up to a whole extra year of schooling over the course of a child's education. British children take GCSEs (roughly SAT II level) at fifteen or sixteen and can then specialise in the subjects that interest them.

 

L

[Ellie]

Happily, California doesn't require a certain number of school days. I just taught my dc as much as i could, which works out to about 365 days a year. :-)

[UrbanSue]

We are go-with-the-flowers who school year round, roughly 5 weeks on, 1 week off. Most subjects I do for a certain number of minutes and we pick up where we left off last time. I promote my kids to the next grade level in the fall based on their age and not their ability. Then I just use the levels of their curriculum as a rough gauge as to how they're doing. If my fourth grader were only part way through a "level 2" math, for example, I'd know that something was up in math and I'd evaluate: do I let that subject slide too much? can we handle more minutes a day? is he really struggling with this subject?

 

For the most part my kids work ahead of grade level and maybe that's why this approach works for us. But going year round means that we get more weeks to school--at least 40 rather than 36. And we have no long vacation during which my kids forget stuff.

[petepie2]

I plan for 36 weeks. This is what's needed to complete most of our curricula. Some things take less time. Some of those weeks may be 4 days of schoolwork, so we just make adjustments to get the week's work done in 4 days. However, on our off weeks, we sometimes will do 1-2 subjects. I count these days as school days (because I can). This also has the effect of lightening the load a bit for one of our regular weeks. In the end, I always have over 180 days.

[StartingOver]

We school year round, and play hooky regularly. LOL I would be willing to bet we do about 300 days a year. But I don't need to keep track at this age.

[TreasuresFromHeaven]

We live in NC and our state doesn't require 180 days but that is what I aim for. We are required to consistently teach for 9 months out of the year (whatever that means...lol). We actually school year around from Jan-Dec. This year, we pretty much school 4 days a week with a week off every term. That allows for errands, appointments and catching up around the house. Still feel so locked in....lol

[CatholicMom]

We are required to have 180 days of instruction in NY. I plan those days, plus extras because I know things will happen...

 

We finished our 180 days today, but we are still going to do math and reading throughout the summer. It will be really light (1 math lesson, 2 chapters of a book per day) but though it does add up I don't count it toward "attendance" because our attendance is already met.

[boscopup]

We school year round, so usually there are roughly 200 days "planned", and if we take off some, it's no big deal.

 

I also don't do every single lesson of every single subject. ;)

 

I can very easily pack our 5-day week into 4 days if we have something going on during the week. I've even packed a 5-day week into 3 days. My kids are all elementary, so the work is pretty simple and there is TONS of repetition, so skipping a lesson here or there really makes no difference.

[skeeterbug]

PS in Australia is 40 weeks, or 200 days. I am not required to do a certain number of days in my state. But this gives me some leeway if I'm using a 36 week curriculum, there is plenty of time for days off here and there.

 

I find myself able to complete core subjects well enough. Things like AAS don't need to be broken down into a certain number of weeks, we just do spelling 2-3 times a week and we get as far as we get. It doesn't matter how fast we move through the levels. My 8yo is in RS C which is known to take more than a year. We do math 4-5 times a week and we get as far as we get. Etc. it's the content subjects that I struggle with and I've found need more scheduling. That's where I get lazy and we get behind. But again, a longer school year helps with that.

 

I sense a struggling mama. :grouphug: feeling in bondage to a schedule is no fun.

[SilverMoon]

Our state doesn't require us to report attendance, thus I don't keep track. :001_smile:

[Dustybug]

I'm in NC as well. I teach year round, taking breaks as needed. My morning sickness was so horrid at the beginning of this pregnancy, we took nearly 2 full months off because I could barely move off the couch. I'm thankful for the flexibility. I'm pretty Type A as well, but that is WHY I go year round, so that I have ample time to get everything in.

[MinivanMom]

We are required to count days in our state. I always plan 37 weeks of "school". That gives us 36 weeks of instruction plus 1 week to do our required standardized testing. This should work out to about 185 days per year, but I seem to keep winding up with about 200 by the end of the year. It comes from sometimes doing work or special projects on Saturdays or during weeks that I had planned to be "vacation" time.

[IrishMum]

We school year round. I don't keep track, and luckily here in Melbourne, Australia I am not required to. I am in the 'we just do the next thing' boat. We work on everything for a set time, always picking up where we finished last time. No real schedule or plan. I take mental health days when I need them, and some days we just take a day off cause we feel like it :) We never take more than three weeks off at a time, It's too hard to get back into school if we do. My boys even do math over Christmas! So, though we are relaxed and unscheduled, my boys still do a lot of school work, and are on track or ahead in most areas.

[NittanyJen]

Our state requires attendance be reported, but does not require any specific amount of school be completed. Most people in our state do report at least 180 days though, as we do not want homeschooling to come up on anybody's radar as needing supervision, and most of us do way more than 180 days anyway.

 

I always advocate reporting truthfully, whether you are under or over-- though the state itself makes this difficult, since you have to report it by July 31 for the period ending July 31 and the website can be finicky enough to use that you need to report well ahead of time in case there are problems :). It would make more sense to report by July 31 for the period ending June 30, or to report by Aug 30 for the period ending July 31!

 

In any case, back to the question at hand, we generally manage to put in in between 200 and 220 days. This year we were just a hair under, at 198, due to some illnesses and additional travel that I chose not to count as school, though I could well have counted as educational field trips (that would have added 20 more days right there, and it was indeed educational, as we explored abandoned 800 year old ruins, hiked through geological wonders and examined them, and more).

 

We also school all year round. If we finish something, we just move on to the next thing. There is no danger of getting lazy-- for us, school is not about checking off the appropriate boxes, it's about exploring this amazing universe we live in! There will not be time enough in a million years to learn even a thimbleful about it by graduation time as it is! Right now my heart is breaking knowing that we are soon leaving behind our current history and science studies and moving on to the next topics, because honestly, we could spend years on just these ideas. However, in logic stage, that would be a disservice to my kids, since they were in public school for most of grammar stage and never got a strong "survey" before. If we lay a good foundation now, we can specialize more in rhetoric stage :).

 

We take an occasional day off to recharge, go on a field trip, see a movie, enjoy just being outdoors, or have a spontaneous play date. Every six-eight weeks, we take a week off to let information sink in better. Once in a while, we take two or three weeks to run away on a trip. Usually by the end of a vacation week, the kids are more than ready to hit the books again-- there is a huge world to explore out there!

[Lilaclady]

I think since you know that having some unplanned events can throw your schedule off, it is best to plan it in. So maybe plan every 5 week as a catch p week, if something happens that grow your schedule off, you can use that week to cat h u and if nothin happens than it might be a nice break.

I don't plan out everyday of the whole year or even a semester. We just keep plodding along and if something nice happens, we can take advantage of it without feeling guilty. We do more than 180 days of school though and sometimes we do 2 half days to make a up a whole day.

[Chelli]

Check out my How I Plan Our Homeschool Year blog post in my signature. It's a very simple formula to keep up with if you're ahead, behind, or right on track.

[weederberries]

I'll say that we school more, but I've never counted.

 

We begin our year in January and school as often as we can. We take random days off when life gets in the way. I don't fret about planning a vacation in the middle of February. We also travel overseas for about a month in the fall and I do not consider that "out of school," since we spend our days deliberately learning language, culture, art, history, music, and even bring a few workbooks along to keep up in subjects like math. Some days, our school consists of one subject and we move on. Sometimes I'm able to complete 3 grammar lessons in a day and we get ahead or catch up. Today (Friday) we took our spelling test, read from our literature selection and called it a day due to a medical procedure. Those are the two things that not finishing this week would really throw a kink in my plans.

 

I basically judge our school year by the calendar month and about where I find myself in the book. It's June, so with our January start, we should be about half way in most books, though some we are well ahead and yes, we have 1 that we have fallen far behind. I don't fret over shifts from the target because I have always been able to pick up the pace, double up lessons as necessary. I typically don't slow down unless the content is just fun to linger over (American revolution, Isaac Newton/physics) and just allow us to finish a curriculum before the end of the year and either take a break, pick a random topic to explore further or plow ahead into the next curriculum, assuming there may be a time next year when we might fall behind.

 

We do school through the 100 degree summer days and we forget about school completely on beautiful fall and spring days. I like the flexibility. I need it for my sanity. I must push myself to school sometimes because it's easy to just want one more day off.

[amyrobynne]

We don't have to report a certain number of days. My husband teaches at my kids' former private school and we follow his schedule because when Daddy's home, it's hard for the kids to think it's a school day. We mixed a few days up here and there and ended up with 175 days while the school had 173. I'm pretty sure the public schools had less because they started a week later and have more school service days.

 

I figured out that we need to schedule less on Fridays. I have some subjects I only schedule if we'll be home all day (spelling and poetry, for starters). We rotate religion/art/science and I'll put religion on the days when we have errands because it's quicker than the other options. I generally call it a school day if we fit in math, language arts of some sort, and history.

[KrissiK]

This year we did 195 days, though one day a week was co-op, which I counted as a school day, though we didn't do our curriculum. This is the first year our homeschool support group has done co-op, and I didn't know what to expect. Well, having 20% of our curriculum time knocked off, we got behind, so even though we did 195 days, we still didn't finish our curriculum and the boys have 3 weeks of math to do. I schedule about 200 days, which gives us lee-way. I try to go above 180 days, just to feel superior to the public schools, lol.

[Garga]

For me, I work on my feelings/attitude. Yes, I'm locked in, just like at a paying job, just like public schooled kids.

 

If I don't treat it like a paying 9-5, 50 week a year job, we start to slack off.

 

No, I don't school for 50 weeks a year, but when I worked full time I was completely locked in for all but 2 weeks each year, plus a couple of holidays. I remind myself that even with my 180 days of school, it's still much more freedom than when working.

 

It keeps things in perspective.

[Tanikit]

As far as I know we are meant to school 196 days per year where I live. I school year round and take off whenever we need a break - when I am working, when we go on holiday or when we just need a rest. I know at the beginning of the year how far I must be by the end of the year and then every 3 months I'll check to see whether we are on track - we are almost always ahead though. Math is the easiest to keep track of and I also check when we finish a particular book so that I can decide whether to take a break and do something else or just start the next book. I also do not take breaks just because we are ahead - we just keep going.

[NASDAQ]

300 days a year. I divide my must-dos into three broad 'terms' -- Fall/winter, spring, summer/early fall. Fall gets split up because we've got a lot of holidays then. I set goals for my terms and sometimes we do it, and sometiems we don't, and life goes on. We're well ahead, so it doesn't matter if I don't get my neurotic goal done.

[Laura Corin]

Spam reported.

 

L

[kiwik]

You beat me to it.

[Soror]

We have a certain amount we are supposed to do as decried by the state. So, I only record what I have to record. We school more than that though.

[Ellie]

As far as I know we are meant to school 196 days per year where I live. I school year round and take off whenever we need a break - when I am working, when we go on holiday or when we just need a rest. I know at the beginning of the year how far I must be by the end of the year and then every 3 months I'll check to see whether we are on track - we are almost always ahead though. Math is the easiest to keep track of and I also check when we finish a particular book so that I can decide whether to take a break and do something else or just start the next book. I also do not take breaks just because we are ahead - we just keep going.

 

 

Huh. I didn't know there were any states that required that many days for homeschooled children. LSNED. :-)

[MissKNG]

I count 180 days of school because it's required by the state. But we school a lot more than 180 because we work lightly through the summer.

[regentrude]

I know there are some that school more than 180 days and they just go with the flow. They pick up the next day where they left off the day before. If it takes 12 months to get thru math rather than 9 months, that is fine. But I can't seem to wrap my type A mind around this. How do you gauge if you are on track or behind? How do you keep from getting too lazy and not getting much school done? (I am always afraid of this for myself)

 

I am very type A,but I also realize that scheduling out lessons in minute detail does not allow my kids the freedom to go with the flow, to spend more time on a subject they are passionate about for the moment.

I require time on task, a certain number of school hours per day (depending on grade). The kids are free to choose what subjects they want to work on and for how long, using the materials I have selected. Only math is required daily. It averages out over the course of a year - a history "binge" may be followed by a science binge. I remind them of neglected subjects, and I have to insist on continuous work in foreign language.

 

The concept of being "on track" is irrelevant to me, since there is no prescribed track. I design my own coursework and do not use premade curriculum. Before high school, I do not even have prescribed content: we cover as much history or science or literature as we manage to cover, being led by the kids' interest. As long as they spend enough time on academics, I am fine with whatever they learn in this time. Both kids work several grades ahead in math, so they can take whatever time they need.

In high school we become more structured, but still do not "schedule".

 

We are required to log hours. I make sure we have the 1,000 hours required by law for our state, but we spread it out. We do some light school over the summer. We do full school for two 18 week semesters, that's 180 days. We do "light" school for several more weeks.

[m0mmaBuck]

Our state requires 1000 hrs for grades K-6 and 1080 hrs for grades 7-12. Ironically, mandatory age of education is 8 (i.e. 2nd grade). Anyway, the state also says, ""The legislature recognizes that home-based instruction is less structured and more experiential than classroom education. Therefore, these provisions of the nature and quantity of instruction shall be liberally construed." As long as we cover the 11 required subjects in some form, we are good.

 

That said, we usually do more that 180 days just because I count field trips and educational material gained on vacations. Somehow I start after the PS, finish before the PS, and still manage at least 180 days (because we don't have inservice days, monthly Fridays off, and tend to do at least 1/2 days over Spring Break, Christmas break, etc).

[Juliegmom]

I plan for 36 weeks. This is what's needed to complete most of our curricula. Some things take less time. Some of those weeks may be 4 days of schoolwork, so we just make adjustments to get the week's work done in 4 days. However, on our off weeks, we sometimes will do 1-2 subjects. I count these days as school days (because I can). This also has the effect of lightening the load a bit for one of our regular weeks. In the end, I always have over 180 days.

 

 

 

Yep! Our school plan looks similar to this.

[lynn]

180 is required here, however, that includes a certain number of teacher planning days and absent days.

[Courtney_Ostaff]

We do 5 days per week, with days off for being sick or traveling. (We don't travel much). It works for us, because we HS the days that Daddy works--I want her to take it seriously, so we call it work, just like Daddy works. OTOH, she's only 5, so that may change.

[Mommy_of_4]

We school way more than 180 days/yr. We school yr round and just take off a few days here and there. One we finish one book we just move to the next level so my kids are always ahead and if they need more time for something we can slow down and not worry about being behind and sticking to a Aug-May schedule.