School year round, or do you take a summer break?

[justamouse]

Missing out on what? 

We have a pool, so what we do is school all morning, have lunch, and then go outside by the pool and kick back. 

The kids don't do anything before noon anyway, so we might as well school then. That way I can take off when we please through the year. 

If they finish stuff up early-say, July, we drop that subject until September, when the PS starts back up. So they get summer, they get break, they get hours of fun in the sun, and I don't have to deal with them forgetting anything over the summer. :D

[Dolphin]

We take our biggest break from Thanksgiving-New year. It is just a blah time of year. We put away the school books and try to find fun stuff to do. We take a couple of 1 week holidays in the summer, but it gets hot here in the afternoon. The kids like to be inside in the ac from 1-4, so that is when we have lunch and do some school work. Once it cools down they are back out playing. Most kids go inside during that time, I bet some are watching TV or playing video games. We just are doing something different. Once the neighborhood kids are outside, mine go back too.

[texasmama]

We do a hybrid, as well.  We follow a 36 week traditional school schedule for most subjects, in addition to attending a co op during the traditional school year.  The summers are for doing a lot of reading aloud, unit studies (puberty and drugs/alcohol last summer), math enrichment, cementing concepts (paragraph writing, fractions, etc) and catch up on what we did not finish during our 36 week year.  My boys will be finishing their math most or all of the summer.  We shall see how far we get. 

 

I have offered year round school to my kids or six weeks on and one week off all year.  They always turn me down.  They prefer to hit is harder for 36 weeks and very light during the summer.  Last summer I overscheduled us, though, and I had to ditch some things.  I will not make that mistake again.

[myfunnybunch]

We follow the traditional school schedule, but do very light schooling in the summer as well, perhaps an hour a day plus music and read-aloud time.

 

Cat

[NotSoObvious]

It depends on the year! 

 

We travel a lot and we've moved twice in the last three years. We'll do another local move this fall. We've taken a lot of time off this year with visiting family and we'll leave in May for three weeks in South America. We'll do more school this summer than we usually do. One summer we did math and some sort of spelling or writing every day. That was a summer we spent mostly at home. Last summer we traveled for three months, so we didn't do any traditional school work, but they learned a lot!This summer we'll have a few things I want to get caught up on before fall, so we'll do some work.

 

We live in Florida now, so I see us doing school during the summer because if we go outside, we'll melt. ;)

[freeindeed]

We school year-round, but take off the months of December and July. Also, we take off a week in late March/early April for spring break. We also take off a day here and there for doctor's appointments, field trips, and "fun days." We have no problem getting in the required180 days-actually we end up with more days. :)

[redheadmom]

We school year round for multiple reasons. First, the kids don't forget as much over the summer so there is less they have to catch up on at the beginning of the year.  Second, it allows us to take off in the middle of the school year for travel, other events, etc without worrying about making up days.  

 

I said my kids prefer year round, but I honestly haven't asked them.  They do enjoy taking time off during the year for other things.  I don't think my kids are missing out on anything.  They aren't in school for 6-8 hours a day during the summer.   There is still plenty of time for being outside, swimming and other typical kid activities.  

 

I like being able to take off when we want without stressing about days and attendance counts.  We usually end up with 1 week each month during the summer not being school due to VBS, summer camp, visiting relatives, etc.  

[happypamama]

We've always schooled year-round, so my children don't know any different. It's hot outside in July and August, so we might as well get plenty of bookwork done then. We finish our year by Memorial Day and are off completely from then until July 1. We also take off the week of Thanksgiving, three weeks around Christmas and New Year's, two weeks around Easter, all family birthdays and our anniversary, and whenever else we need to. My children will do several weeks of tennis lessons in July, and those will count as school days, although they won't be required to do bookwork those days. If we have the chance to visit with family or go swimming or do camps or vacation or anything, we'll do those too. One of our favorite family vacations was around Thanksgiving one year; we took an entire week off then, spent the first half of it doing the usual family things around Thanksgiving, and then spent the second half going to Chincoteague and visiting other interesting touristy spots over near where DH and I grew up. Great time of year to visit all of those places, very educational, and we never could have done it if we'd needed to fit our bookwork into a standard September-June public school year.

[KAM]

We are doing year-round this year, and so far it is working well. We have been going roughly 3-4 weeks on, 1 week off. I feel like they are actually missing out on less by going year-round. They were able to get in some extra sledding time during their February week off. This week will be our March week off and it is just starting to feel warm enough that they want to be outside more, so I expect them to be out a lot this week. I do plan on taking off 3-4 weeks for summer, but I find that the kids get restless after too much of a break, so the rest of the time we will be doing at least some work, even if just during the hottest part of the day.