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4-day week?


kailuamom
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Any of you schedule a 4-day week? If you do, what do you do on the 5th day? Field trips? Catch-up? Do you do more on the 4 days? I am thinking of doing this but not sure how it will go. Just curious about others who have tried it/do it. Do you go year-round?

 

Ack! I am overwhelmed by all of this planning!!

 

Thanks. :001_smile:

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We attend Classical Conversations on Fridays for 24 weeks (Sept. - Apr.) so during that time we only have 4 days to complete our regular work. When CC is not in session, we follow a 5 day a week schedule.

 

We do school year-round.... taking breaks as needed. We work from 8 a.m. to noon (if possible!) and I prefer having all 5 days to complete our work. We use our afternoons for library visits, dr. appts., field trips, etc...

 

HTH!

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Math is 5 days a week, but for everything else, we do a week's worth of work in 4 days. For instance, our Biblioplan history schedule shows a week's worth of readings, and actually schedules it for 3 days. We spread out all of the readings over 4 days. Our materials generally indicate how much to do in a week and we just make sure it gets done in 4 days. The 5th day is spent doing errands out of the house (it's usually Wednesday). We still do piano practice and math that day. We finish everything up by the end of May, so you don't need to necessarily go year round.

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Our "fifth" day is actually our "first" day. We don't do school on Monday. I use that day to run errands, deep clean the house, appointments, outings, library, gathering of supplies, laundry, ect. I have found that this works best for us and allows me to start the school week with a clean house and everything on hand for the week. I choose not to do it on Saturday because that is usually family "adventure" day and Sunday we rest.

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We go year-round and use Fridays for playgroup and library time. So it still counts as a school day but we are not doing bookwork. This year I will probably do spelling and reading comprehension testing on that day as well.

 

Pretty much, I plan our days on two-week cycles. I have all of our math and grammar arranged into 2 to 8 week units where we are working on a specific topic. We do a spelling list from SWR and a chapter from SOTW per week. We also do 2 week lapbooking units where we look indepth at a specific topic. I have found that the short weeks, short intense lessons and the variety of topics (they chose them) really helps to keep things running smoothly, less-stressful and interesting for our family.

 

:001_smile:

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We do a 4 day week. Dh is off on Fridays so that is our family day (along with my cleaning the house and grocery shopping). We school 40 weeks and take 12 off throughout the year - 2 at Christmas, 1 at Thanksgiving, 1 at Spring Break and 8 in the summer. In order to get all our math done we start the first few weeks by doing 2 math lessons a day since most of the beginning is review anyway. That allows us to just do math 4x a week the remainder of the year.

 

This year I am hoping to move towards more of a Fine Arts Friday model. On Fridays I want to do an Artist and Composer Study, listen to classical music do our weekly art lessons and take a nature hike. That means I will have to figure out another time to clean the house. Still working on that. ;)

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We're trying something new this year - - project week, a suggestion from one of the Charlotte Mason sites. Instead of taking one day per week for projects, field trips, etc you take every fourth week.

 

The idea is that it is easier to get more done, project-wise, if you devote a week to it rather than five separate days, because you stay in that 'mode' for a longer period of time and have more leeway for leaving things out, etc.

 

So we will use project week for science experiments, more involved arts and crafts, any type of hands-on learning that's difficult to fit into a routine day. I also intend it as a time for planning menus and cooking ahead, working on home projects, and staying on top of school organization and planning. The cooking and home projects will involve the kids; again, I think project week will make it easier to let them participate (as opposed to the git-'er-done mentality I often have when we have to also fit in school, outside lessons, etc).

 

My kids are entering 3rd and 5th. I don't find it works well anymore to routinely have a four-day week, even though we don't take the entire summer off.

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We go to a co-op on Fridays for 24 weeks out of the year. I like our schedule because we work really hard M-TH and have something to look forward to on Fridays.

 

The downside is that I don't feel like I have much flexibillity the rest of the week. We really have to stay on task to get it all done.

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We are going do the basic subjects 4x and on the other day (I think Wen. so it will be right in the middle of our week) do Art+appreciation, Music appreciation, a long period of Science, perhaps history projects, and scouting and 4-H projects.

 

Next year will be the first time we have tried this, but those are subjects I rarely get too, and that my kids love.

 

This year we did not school year round, my sis spent the summer with dad and school and third trimester just don't go together for me ;). I also think we should get through most of our school work in a pretty typical 35-40 week year this year. Though we may continue to do something next summer, agian it depends on what my sis is doing, if we didn't get something finished, ect.

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We do 4 days. My son is in high school so most of his school work he does on his own. If he is not finished with his weekly schedule then any left over work is done on Friday. I take my mom to do her weekly shopping on Friday, so it helps for me to have this day off also.

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We do a 4 day week here. The fifth day (Friday) is spent getting groceries, running errands, etc. I have ZERO time on the weekends to do anything as I'm gone from the house from 6:15am until at least 8 pm. (I work 12 hr days+ driving time). So I have to have a day where we don't have to do anything schoolish. :)

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We aren't taking Friday's off this year, but I am making them different and lighter than in the past. My plan is for him to do bible, math (a MUST for every Friday), current event report. We will have 4-H 2 Friday's a month. On the other Friday's he wil work on a long term history or science project.

 

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We're doing 4-day weeks and only 28 weeks of lessons. We work better doing more intense study less often. So I do M/T Th/F and Wednesdays are outings and life-applied math days.

 

We also don't do History and Science during those weeks. Those are done more as unit studies on the non-lesson weeks. This way the more intense study times of the basic subjects aren't overwhelmed by Science and History. Plus we do those as a family and it's more stressful on me and I like them separated out.

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This year we're doing 4 days of the following:

 

Math

Poetry

Penmanship

Literature

Phonics

Reading

 

And 1 day (Friday) we do these:

 

Science

Religion

Music

Art

 

Then in January we'll be adding Geography to Friday's mix and still trying to keep it to one and a half hours tops.

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I am planning a 4 day week. On Fridays, we will have a co-op from 9-12 most weeks and then an extra social once a month in the afternoons. I plan to use that day for co-op and field trips and still count them as school days. It also gives me a built in catch up day or a way to take a day off when DD is out of school.

 

He will still do LLATL in the AM with his sister, listen to our audio book in the car, and do his own reading at bedtime.

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We do a lot of our extras on Fridays.

 

 

  • Field trips
  • Home Ec
  • Art
  • Music Appreciation
  • Current Events
  • Election events this fall
  • volunteer work
  • Critical Thinking activities
  • Budgeting- how to handle money!

We don't do all of them every week and actually my daughter does some home ec daily, but this is her hardcore day when she puts to use what she has been learning.

 

We LOVE that extra day. Sometimes we do just take that day off, but usually there are still some extras thrown in there.

 

HTH,

Laurie

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