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Anybody else out of sync with the normal school year?


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It's October and we're about halfway through our "school year".    :001_unsure:   

 

Anybody else have their own unique school year?  What do we do when the kids start high school and we need to come up with transcripts?  And why is this bothering me??   :tongue_smilie:   

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We school year round. We loosely start around September, so it shouldn't feel like we're way out of sync, but I often feel out of sync, in part because we often are on a micro level - we'll do school on federal holidays, on weekends, and then have off other weird days. We often take off unusual weeks and then are at work during part of summer break and spring break. I like being on our own path, but sometimes it does feel a little like we're swimming upstream...

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We school year round.

 

As it happens we started several new things in July, or was it August?

 

At that time youngest just finished his visual therapy and I was able to rearrange our schedule since I didn't have to spend two hours a day on his recommended therapies. So I basically got to start him on all his subjects that were on hold for almost a year. I also had more time for eldest so he started a new writing curriculum.

 

I am so far removed from the public school system, that I don't ever think about being on or off schedule when relate to them.

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We school year round, but I'm due to have a baby in March and I have no idea what we will be able to do after March so we are rushing to get as much done by then. We are all over the place, subject wise. Some things will be done in late February (history) and some things (math) we will somehow try to continue starting around April? Ish?

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I school year round (so we're never half way done here!), taking breaks when we need them. I do school on Saturdays when we're home. I'm definitely not on the same time schedule!

 

I don't think in terms of even an adjusted calendar in making curriculum choices. Some examples: We switched to a new math program, though in the same 5th grade level, in I think March of last year. We began the 6th grade level of that math sometime this past summer. We'll be in the 7th grade level in November or December of this year I believe. I started a new grammar this summer, then added CLE LA with one child about a month ago. I switched my goals for composition after talking to a friend about a month ago. I started a new science curriculum last month too, because one of mine wanted more structure in his science.

 

Anyway, I'm not thinking at all like I did as a public school teacher, scheduling or otherwise. It's worked well here so far. I assume I'll need to switch to a more standard schedule for high school though.

 

 

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I don't think in terms of even an adjusted calendar in making curriculum choices. 

 

I used to not care until we started approaching high school.  Then the panic kicked in.  I wish I still didn't care!

 

One of the big reasons we like homeschooling is because we can choose what we want to do (with regards to everything - schedule, subjects we study, whether or not we have grades, etc).  It seems like it's expected that our high school will look like what the public schoolers do for high school.  Not really what I want to do!  

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Yes, there has been a slow erosion of a schedule since we started a few years ago. Then I got sick this July/August and it's taken nearly 2 months to feel well and on track again. Needless to say, my perception of boundaries on school days and subjects has relaxed. The last vestige of traditional school ideas to dissipate was courses must be completed in 36 weeks. This may sound like a minor realization, but knowing I don't need to cram and catch up was freeing. :)

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Why do you school on weekends?

 

Most years we do a 4-day school week, but this year, I worried that my oldest wasn't retaining all that we were covering in Algebra.  So, we started working on that over the weekend.  Then I worried we weren't reading our lit fast enough (because we get most of our stuff from the library).  And I think I got carried away!  

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I'm going to list by subjects for the high school transcript :) Makes my life easier than classifying by year for my asynchronous kids.

 

I probably need to do this, too!  My kids will most likely start off at community college, so I'm not sure why I'm so worried about doing things our way.  We're not shooting for an Ivy League school or anything...   :D   

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Why do you school on weekends?

You didn't ask me, but I'll answer for our family. My son is a creature of routine. If we take more than two days off of school, he acts like the world is ending when we return to schooling and continues this behavior for at least two, if not three days. Because he attends a once a week enrichment day on Fridays, I have to school on the weekend to avoid the more than two days off problem (Friday is all fun to him, even though he does plenty of learning :-)). I do not have it in me to deal with moody boy every Monday, Tuesday, and some Wednesdays every single week, so we school on the weekend. This has the added bonus of making it easy to accomplish lots of schoolwork even with his Friday's devoted to enrichment fun.

 

To the OP, I guess we are out of sync because we school year-round (with most of June off). I start records for the next school year on July 1st and end records on June 30th. We just start the next book when we finish one (he gets an ice cream cone and a week off of that subject to celebrate). This may change as the get older, of course, but it works well for now.

 

When I was homeschooled, we used boxed Abeka. There was nothing more exciting than finishing my books one to two months before the PS kids were done even though we started school on the same day every year. I wonder if I'm depriving my kids of something by schooling year round?

;-)

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We do school on weekends because there are no household members who work a M-F shift so weekends just aren't relevant.

 

We're more likely to take that cat's birthday off than George Washington's.

 

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To quote Andrew Pudewa at this year's GHC in Cincinnati: "On a transcript, call it whatever you want and put it down, because that's what the public schools do.  Transcripts are a record of time served; not a record of material mastered."

 

In other words, don't worry about the transcript if you know your child has learned the material.

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It's October and we're about halfway through our "school year".    :001_unsure:   

 

Anybody else have their own unique school year?  What do we do when the kids start high school and we need to come up with transcripts?  And why is this bothering me??   :tongue_smilie:   

 

I saw no reason to have a "school year" that was different from, you know, the real year. So our "school year" began January 1 and ended December 31. We took off a couple of weeks around Easter, a couple of weeks in late August/early September, Thanksgiving through about the middle of January, and any other random times as needed for mental health, vacations, and middle-of-the-week trips to Disneyland. :D

 

I "promoted" dc in the fall, just to keep things at Sunday school or conversations with grandparents from getting weird; otherwise, we just did stuff until we finished (or got tired of it) and then moved on to the next thing.

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In Australia the school year is last week of Janurary to middle of December. 

December is busy and I love Christmas, but I never understood a reason for the huge break in Janurary when it's WAY too hot to do anything but sit inside anyway for most of the day! Plus I function better in the summer.

So we school from the 2nd week of Janurary until the last full week of November. It only puts us a couple of weeks 'ahead' but it works way better for us.

 

But, our school week is Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (4 day week with homeschool playgroup, library trip and grocery shopping on Thursday, making our 'weekend' Sunday and Monday)

We do it because DH has never worked a mon-fri job in his adult life, which makes the typical school week irrelevant anyway. Right now he is working Tues/Wed/Thur and I work a full day Fri or Sat, plus various weekday evenings, so whichever parent isn't working that day does school with them, and our weekend is the days both adults are free. Plus we want the freedom to do things on school days when the crowds are down. Having said that, the school day on saturday is flexible, and can be swapped to sunday or monday if a friend is having a birthday party or some other socialization weekend event occurs, that way they aren't missing out on weekend events with friends. 

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According to the hours that I'm supposed to track ds is right at half-way through this year. DD is about 1/3rd of the way on hours but almost half-way through her math but not officially started 3rd grade spelling(I switched her on programs this year and started a year behind because it seemed a better place to jump in- although at the pace we do it she'll finish it well before the year is up). Ds just started a new math book, it could either easily be finished before the year is up or stretched into 2years, I don't have a clue, we'll see how he does. He is a struggling speller but we just work on it daily and we get to wherever we get. Our schedule plan is generally about 4.5 days a week, but we have some 5 days and some weeks we do a lighter schedule with half-days, sometimes we do 6 days- dh has been gone a lot and we just enjoy our studies. Having the longer weeks sometimes helps as well when something comes up that we really want to do we can do it without guilt because we put in more than enough time and are working at a good pace. 

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We're nearly halfway into our year. We finish one year and start the next on my daughter's birthday in May, and then school year round with odd breaks. Summertime is kinda spotty because of travel and some opportunities that are only available in the summer. Then we do a five week trip in Feb/March.

 

Only in first grade now, so I don't have to worry about what this will look like in high school yet :)

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It bothers me, too, and I'm never sure why.  We've never been on track for a normal year, and we finish our subjects at different times.  We'll finish our math books in December, but just started new grammar books.  I've always just gone at the pace my kids need and moved on to the next thing when they were ready.  Sometimes that fits nicely into a lesson-a-day schedule, and other times it looks pretty different.  Oh well.  

In a way, isn't that the beauty of homeschooling?  You can meet the needs of your kids within the unique context of your family.  If you need to work on weekends, go for it!  If you can only manage 4 days a week for more weeks, that's fine, too.  

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I probably need to do this, too!  My kids will most likely start off at community college, so I'm not sure why I'm so worried about doing things our way.  We're not shooting for an Ivy League school or anything...   :D   

 

Those are our plans as well.   :lol:   Community college makes so much more sense to us.  

 

I'll probably be doing their transcripts by subject too.  We seem to start at a different time each year, but I also don't plan on a regular high school sequence and I don't want that to throw off their transcript.  We'll probably have lots of 1/4 credit subjects, and I'd rather list it as a full credit over the 4 years then a separate credit each year.  

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We're always out of sync because my kids didn't get the memo that they're supposed to grow and learn linearly. They stall and jump. Last year ds was plodding through maths with difficulty, this year he keeps leaping and begged me to start beast academy in October instead of January like I was shooting for...

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Yup. We started later than we wanted to, and we'll have Grandma for a month over the year end holidays. We're rarely to never on track with the majority.  The local schools have already had their fall breaks, and the bored children really wanted to play with my children, who kept having to say "Sorry, we don't get Fall Break. We have Grandma Break in December."

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Yup. We started later than we wanted to, and we'll have Grandma for a month over the year end holidays. 

 

Our Grandma will be here over the holidays, too.  I learned the hard way - never try to do school when Grandma is here!!   :laugh:

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