How do you schedule your 180 days?

[macmacmoo]

80 is about the norm for number of days per year required. I know some states are more way more lenient and others a bit more strict.

 

We currently do lessons 5 days a week. 6 weeks on and 1 week off. When neatly schedule out gives us a nice Christmas break, plus a 6 week break mid year.

Hubby jokes that we should take off the days leading up to and during Aunt Floo's visit. Though it would mean losing the 6 week mid year break he says they kids may have a higher survival rate. :p

 

Some do 36 weeks of 5 days a week. Others do 45 days of 4 days a week.

I know some family pick a date each year and when all the lessons are done they don't start up til that same date again.

Others assume everyday is a learning day and tells the school they follow the local calendar.

I know one schedules 140 formal school days and lets the rest be field trips and other enrichment type days.

 

How do you schedule your 180 days?

[Kristie in Florida]

Like you do. Our state doesn't require a specific amount though, 180 just makes sense to me.

[Ellie]

If I were to count days, I would start at the beginning of whatever the school year is and check off 180 days (Monday through Friday, just because) from that, then file the attendance form. Attendance for homeschoolers is silly; I mean, you get up every day and there they are. :D

 

Otherwise, we worked on our stuff until we were finished, then moved on to the next thing. 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, and Thanksgiving through about the middle of January, plus other random days as needed.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

We're giving 4 weeks, one week off a try for this calender year. We'll have one break in August that'll actually be two weeks and we'll take two weeks for Christmas. That'll give us 39 weeks/195 days. We may end up with other days off too. Break weeks will likely have days with field trips, reading books, art projects, physical activity (PE) and watching documentaries. I'll count those days as school too. School days during the summer will likely be more interest led.

 

My state doesn't have any homeschooling regulations so I don't need a set number of days. When I consider trying out a new schedule I do look for it to be in the ballpark of 180 days since that seems to be the standard amount of time required to accomplish a year's worth of work. I don't worry too much about number of days though - or finishing curriculum in a year. I just try to be generally consistent and keep moving forward.

[Seeking Squirrels]

I count august as when we switch from one year to the next. I use a year-at-a-glance calendar to sketch out 36 weeks, skipping over weeks for holidays and leaving off weeks here and there to allow for vacations or give lee-way for missed days adding up. This gives me an idea when we'll hit 36 weeks. Then I completely ignore that, use another year-at-a-glance calendar, and simply highlight the square any day we do school or a field trip. Every once in a while I go back and number the highlighted days to keep a running tally of days we've done and I can compare this to the first calendar I made to see if we're about where I thought we'd be. Last year I did just the running number with no highlighting, but this year I just like highlighters :-)

 

So far our charter hasn't required any attendance records, but it only takes a few seconds, usually just on friday, to highlight the week. It's also nice for days I'm feeling like we're not doing a good job. I can look at all the pretty highlighted days and see that we're actually doing pretty good. Today was 106. My first calendar says this is week 21, so we're actually a little bit ahead of where I penciled us in to be.

[purpleowl]

My state has no requirements regarding number of days or attendance.

 

I've found that it works better for the general running of our household if school is the default. So we go year-round, and I don't count days. When we need or want to take a day off, we take it, and that's fine, because in general, we do school. I'm certain that we get more than 180 days in. 

 

I did previously try the 6 weeks on / 1 week off schedule. It was okay, but always hard to get the focus back after a week off, and then what if the nice weather or doctor appointments or grandparents visiting happens a different week? I like how our current approach lets us be flexible with when we take time off.

[Garga]

I didn't count days until I had to for the school system. It was when my son was in 4th grade. I was pretty surprised to find out that I was not doing as many days as I thought. Not by a longshot. We schooled every day, but took off here and there...and those here and theres were much more than I had realized. Much more.

 

I find 180 days to be a harder goal to reach than I'd realized.

 

We start in mid-August with the goal of ending by June 1. I schedule in the big breaks (Christmas and Easter) and then plan for a few days a month for field trips, snow days, and random days off. I try not to exceed my pre-planned days off each month unless it's completely unavoidable.

 

I reassess during the Christmas break to see whether we're on track and usually we're not. Usually we've snuck in a few extra days of time off.

 

For example: in January we skipped 3 afternoons so the boys could play in the snow. Today, we have two unexpected and unavoidable appointments in the same day and we're just not going to be able to squeeze school in between the appointments, so this day is not a homeschool day.

 

The work on those snow afternoons and the work we have today still needs to be done. I'd accounted for a few days off, so we're probably ok, but not if we keep this up. We're almost at the end of random days off. We have about 5 more "random days off" until May and if we take more than 5 random days off between now and May, we'll have to finish up in June.

 

I signed my son up for a theater class every other Friday and those 2 hours cut into his school time. The science and history lessons have to be done sometime. Do we work extra late on Friday from 3:30-5:30 to get them done? Do we make them up on Saturday? Do we wait till the end of the year and do a few days of Science and History in early June till we're done?

 

My point: getting in the 180 days plus having a summer vacation is tricky to me. I have to keep a close eye on it or we do NOT do that much school in the year. For me, it's the law to do 180 days. I wish it wasn't, but then I also think I'd be doing much less by my boys and not realizing it. For me, I have a love/hate relationship with the 180 day thing. I hate keeping track of it, but if it wasn't there, I think we'd end up doing much less because I wouldn't be realizing how much our days off add up.

 

To answer the question: I start school in August, I plan to end in May, I schedule a few floating days off each month, and I keep an eagle eye on my progress throughout the year.

[Hilltopmom]

I don't count.

As far as I'm concerned, all the stuff my kids do is educational. It may not be part of a curriculum, but it's learning.

We school year round now with breaks as needed (plus summer camps & other "only offered in the summer" enrichment things) & unschooled the elementary grades, which maybe helps me be more relaxed about it. That, & I was a public school teacher, I know how much time is wasted at school.

 

When we have things like 4H, or theater classes, or what not- that IS part of school, IMO. If they were in b & m school, music, gym, etc are part of the school day.

 

Now, I do have a high schooler who has a lot of work to get through, so he doesn't take too many days off, but is because he has courses to get through before SAT subject tests in June, not because I'm counting days.

When he finishes a class mid year, we start the next one, we don't wait until the following school year.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Hilltopmom

[mom2scouts]

My state doesn't require us to count days. With few exceptions, we get up and start our school day. We have more days than our local school districts because we don't constantly take off for teacher in-service days, snow days, and minor holidays. We are required to have 900 hours which is really easy to get if I count everything we do which would could as educational in a school setting.

[happypamama]

I have to do 180 days for my state. I do count summer days when they swim, ride bikes, or go to martial arts because it's PE, but otherwise, I count days that fit neatly into the school's opinion of school. (I'm ALL for days where they hang out with grandparents, watch fun movies, or just play, but I feel like that's just inviting extra scrutiny to report 365 days, and I'd rather just fulfill the law and keep them off my back.)

 

We are allowed to start counting July 1, so that's what we do. We usually start bookwork in July. We take all birthdays, our anniversary, a week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, some time in the spring when the nice weather hits, a week in summer for martial arts camp, and all or most of June off, and we take other days off when we need them (sickness, field trips, or just "we need a day off"). We also only do a few subjects one day a week because that's our martial arts class day, and the drive to and from kills a lot of time. (I don't report that as a half day; I check it off as just a day, same as any other, but that's why we look like we do more than 180 days. We usually log 210-240 or so days, but that doesn't mean that math got done every day, kwim?). We are still usually finished by Memorial Day or the week after. It gets so hot here in July and August, and five or six weeks of break in June is really about enough before they are ready to see some structure again. Might as well work in the AC when you can't go outside much during the day anyway, and then we have plenty of flexibility for the rest of the year.

[purpleowl]

I didn't count days until I had to for the school system. It was when my son was in 4th grade. I was pretty surprised to find out that I was not doing as many days as I thought. Not by a longshot. We schooled every day, but took off here and there...and those here and theres were much more than I had realized. Much more.

 

I find 180 days to be a harder goal to reach than I'd realized.

 

<snip>

My point: getting in the 180 days plus having a summer vacation is tricky to me. I have to keep a close eye on it or we do NOT do that much school in the year. 

 

I don't know that you were actually aiming this at me, Garga, but I did feel like I should respond since I said we do school every day and take off here and there. :)

 

So just to clarify my own post, first, we do not do a summer vacation. Summer is miserably hot here, and I get a down-in-the-dumps feeling if I am not doing scheduled things (i.e., school) during that season. Keeping our regular routine also seems to benefit my kids. So that makes more available days during the year for doing school, since we're not trying to take 2-3 months off in the summer.

 

Second, while I am not counting days, I am keeping an eye on how we're progressing through curriculum that's designed to take a school year to complete. In general, we are either on track or ahead. If we were to start falling behind, I would tighten up the requirements for when we can take a day off.

[73349]

I plan to do school every weekday morning unless there's a reason not to. Since we don't take the summer off, it's easy to exceed 200 days.

This school year (since July 1) we've done 150, counting today. I'm required to track days but not to hit a certain number. I believe we'll do about 80 more.

 

Our days are short, but with lots of them, DS still makes good progress.

Edited February 10, 2016 by whitehawk

[HomeAgain]

I let Skedtrack do it for me.  I plug in the number of hours we work per day, number of days needed for the year, and it adjusts and shifts as we need it to.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

I didn't count days until I had to for the school system. It was when my son was in 4th grade. I was pretty surprised to find out that I was not doing as many days as I thought. Not by a longshot. We schooled every day, but took off here and there...and those here and theres were much more than I had realized. Much more.

 

I find 180 days to be a harder goal to reach than I'd realized.

 

We start in mid-August with the goal of ending by June 1. I schedule in the big breaks (Christmas and Easter) and then plan for a few days a month for field trips, snow days, and random days off. I try not to exceed my pre-planned days off each month unless it's completely unavoidable.

 

I reassess during the Christmas break to see whether we're on track and usually we're not. Usually we've snuck in a few extra days of time off.

 

For example: in January we skipped 3 afternoons so the boys could play in the snow. Today, we have two unexpected and unavoidable appointments in the same day and we're just not going to be able to squeeze school in between the appointments, so this day is not a homeschool day.

 

The work on those snow afternoons and the work we have today still needs to be done. I'd accounted for a few days off, so we're probably ok, but not if we keep this up. We're almost at the end of random days off. We have about 5 more "random days off" until May and if we take more than 5 random days off between now and May, we'll have to finish up in June.

 

I signed my son up for a theater class every other Friday and those 2 hours cut into his school time. The science and history lessons have to be done sometime. Do we work extra late on Friday from 3:30-5:30 to get them done? Do we make them up on Saturday? Do we wait till the end of the year and do a few days of Science and History in early June till we're done?

 

My point: getting in the 180 days plus having a summer vacation is tricky to me. I have to keep a close eye on it or we do NOT do that much school in the year. For me, it's the law to do 180 days. I wish it wasn't, but then I also think I'd be doing much less by my boys and not realizing it. For me, I have a love/hate relationship with the 180 day thing. I hate keeping track of it, but if it wasn't there, I think we'd end up doing much less because I wouldn't be realizing how much our days off add up.

 

To answer the question: I start school in August, I plan to end in May, I schedule a few floating days off each month, and I keep an eagle eye on my progress throughout the year.

I used to do the "days off here and there" plan too, thinking that we were getting in way more than 180 days. Then one year I counted...oops...Fortunately, we don't have any legal requirements to meet and my kids were still pretty young so it didn't matter much. That did open my eyes though to how consistent we were really being with school it cleared up for me why it was taking longer than I thought it should to get through materials. I started doing a rough yearly schedule at that point so that I could keep us on track a little better.

[Sherry in OH]

We follow a loose quarter system: 9ish weeks of lessons, 1 week fall break, 9ish weeks, 2 week Christmas break, 9ish weeks, 1 week spring break, 9ish weeks, summer break.

 

I adjust the schedule as needed.  3^rd and 4^th quarters especially.  My children’s extracurricular activities follow the public school calendar.  We take spring break when the schools do. Most years that means a longer 3^rd quarter and a shorter 4^th quarter.  4^th quarter is finished when the year’s lessons are completed or the Friday before Memorial Day, whichever comes first.  We start again in August.  

 

Our requirement is 900 hours per school year. 

[Ellie]

IMHO, any day the children are in the house and awake counts as a school day, whether we open a textbook or not.

[UCF612]

We officially do 6 weeks on with 1 week off 5 days a week. Sometimes we switch things up,like this week we have a ton going on so we did 5 weeks on, this week off. We'll do 7 weeks next session. So I'm flexible as long as we're still getting our work done consistently. We take all of June off (3/4 of us have June birthdays). We took off a decent amount at Christmas too.

[mom31257]

Dh is a school teacher, so we do school on most days that he does. With dd in college this year, we are taking some extra time off when she is here. I don't have to report school days anymore, so I'm not really keeping up with it. I always do some learning in the summer, so that should make up for any we've taken off. 

 

[Chrysalis Academy]

I'm with Garga and 2ndgenhomeschooler, I definitely keep track of days and find it surprisingly hard to hit 180 if I don't count camps, etc. Those days off here and there - when dh is off work, when we take a long weekend trip, etc. can really add up over the course of a year.  I'd love to go 4 days a week and just take Fridays off (dh works a 4/10 schedule and is off Fridays) but we definitely don't school 45 weeks a year. Again, unless you count camps and stuff that they do in the summer, which I never have.

[Raifta]

We don't have to keep track, so I never have.  

 

I find it has been different each year, but for the last two years, we have roughly done something like this:

 

5 or 6 weeks on (5 days/week) and then 1 week off.  In December we might do only math each day plus writing/crafting/baking/cooking.  I would still count most of those days if I had to count as we are doing lots of math those days plus enough extras to be considered 'schooly'.  Take 2 to 4 weeks off formal schoolwork in Feb but focus on something else (last year PE and nature/geography, this year sewing and baking and some indoor PE).  Continue through the summer (summer being July/August and possibly last two weeks of June) - usually 2 -3 days/week most weeks but some weeks (camping, festival) no formal days.

 

 

[Garga]

I don't know that you were actually aiming this at me, Garga, but I did feel like I should respond since I said we do school every day and take off here and there. :)

 

So just to clarify my own post, first, we do not do a summer vacation. Summer is miserably hot here, and I get a down-in-the-dumps feeling if I am not doing scheduled things (i.e., school) during that season. Keeping our regular routine also seems to benefit my kids. So that makes more available days during the year for doing school, since we're not trying to take 2-3 months off in the summer.

 

Second, while I am not counting days, I am keeping an eye on how we're progressing through curriculum that's designed to take a school year to complete. In general, we are either on track or ahead. If we were to start falling behind, I would tighten up the requirements for when we can take a day off.

It wasn't directed at you. :). And this next bit isn't directed at you either. It was just how it worked out for me:

 

When I think "180 days" it doesn't seem like much compared to 365. But here is some math:

 

365 take away the weekends, leaves 264 (Plenty of time for school!)

264 take away the 180 days for school leaves 84 (oh, wow! Lots of wiggle room!)

84 take away 40 days for summer vacation (2 months) leaves 44 (ok--44 is a lot of time to take off.)

44 take away two weeks for Christmas, one week for Easter leaves 29 days. (Um...)

29 take away 1 day a month for unexpected interruptions or mental break days(and 1 day a month is slim) leaves 19 (Not as much wiggle room)

Thanksgiving, New Year's day, Birthdays, Days when Dad is Off work, dentist, doctor, etc...and the 19 days are gone. (Oh dear! Are we going to get in our 180 this year??)

 

That's what I have found happens to me. The time just disappears. I find it a challenge to get the 180 days in. Life is busy.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Garga

[HS Mom in NC]

We've never been legally required to keep track.

We do 4 schooldays and the 5th is PE at 10:30 then socializing with friends.  Our 4 days are longer and cover more than a 5 day week would.We follow the near year round ps schedule (2 weeks off in Spring, Fall and Winter, 6 or 7 weeks off in summer, a few Mondays off here and there for holidays) so my youngest can maximize her time with her best friend who attends ps.

When my older two were younger we did mostly year round school with shorter days. We took off the week of Thanksgiving, most of December and spent more days outdoors in the Spring and Fall and schooled more in the summer because no one wants to go outside when it's 110+ degrees for months at a stretch. Then they got involved in more activities that had lots of kids, most of whom were either in ps or private schools and we had to adjust more to the ps school year to maximize their time with those kids and activities.

[RKWAcademy]

I don't like long breaks in the summer, so we start somewhere in July and school "most" weekdays.  I like to take a day off here and there, too.  Those breaks give the kids and me a nice reset but prevents them from purging too much from their brains.  Last year, we easily surpassed 180.  I plan out about 200 days on the calendar each year but give plenty of room to take off random days.

[RoundAbout]

My state has no requirements regarding number of days or attendance.

 

I've found that it works better for the general running of our household if school is the default. So we go year-round, and I don't count days. When we need or want to take a day off, we take it, and that's fine, because in general, we do school. I'm certain that we get more than 180 days in. 

 

I did previously try the 6 weeks on / 1 week off schedule. It was okay, but always hard to get the focus back after a week off, and then what if the nice weather or doctor appointments or grandparents visiting happens a different week? I like how our current approach lets us be flexible with when we take time off.

 

This is exactly what we do - school is the default every day and we take off days or weeks as they come up.  Seasonally we have heavier or lighter days.  Right now we are in the middle of winter and try to fit in a solid 3 hours a day of academics, then ski in the afternoon.  Summer might be just math and writing if a lot of other kids are available to play.  We get plenty done, have a family culture of reading and learning, and are ahead in several subjects so I don't worry too much about it.  

[Dramorellis]

We don't legally have to track days but we did for the last two years in the interest of having the kids track it just to see and then we have a "party" when we hit 100 days. We typically reach it around early March. We school year round so all the way through the end of July with a several week break and then back up again with the start of a new school year the last week of August. I count anything that would be counted as "enrichment in school. We go see a play, that counts as a school day. We only did math and reading then had doctor appointments, that's a school day. When my son was in school every day was counted even if all they did was watch Kai-lan in Mandarin class. Right now they are making Valentine's for co-op tomorrow and I'm counting it. I distinctly remember spending class time on that when I was in school every year in Elementary. So much time wasting and nonsense goes on in in school that I see no reason to overthink it. I would count just about every day M-F.

[BooksandBoys]

My state requires 172 days, with an average of 4 hours of education daily. When I subtract the once weekly enrichment program they attend (which legally counts), that only leaves about 140 days that I need to provide (we also easily meet the 4 hours because, of course, exercise, art, read-alouds, and Lego engineering count).

 

However, we opt to school on average 6 days a week (including that enrichment day) most weeks, so we actually count about 225 school days a year. I begin tracking (for myself) in July 1st and end on June 30. I mark when we've reached 172 days and that's the end of my official tracking I continue my own personal tracking through the year.

[Lilaclady]

For us, I keep a schedule and check off each day that we do school. Most days that we are out, I am still bake to count the day if we are doing things like piano class, computer class and PE. Those count as electives if in high school.

 

If we are also doing an educational activity- going out to the theater, ballet etc gets counted too. If we take a vacation and attend a museum, science or art exhibit, I count those hours.

 

I shoot for about 200 days each year and I am usually able to reach it. My kids are accelerated so those extra days help. They also do math and read everyday of the summer holiday that we are home.

[Excelsior! Academy]

Our state doesn't require 180 days, however it is strongly encouraged.  Our year is so fluid, it is hard to track start and stop dates.  At any time one child may be starting a new book in one subject and on lesson 75 in another.

[displace]

We school year round. We don't need to track attendance but we keep a portfolio and I have daily records. I think 180 is personally not much but I realize we can't reach it in my family if we were to take the whole summer off. Most weeks we cut school short 2 days a week for playtime. If we miss a full day we do abbreviated work on Saturdays (about one hour or things I can't manage during the week - art, experiments). We take a week off around thanksgiving, 2-3 weeks Christmas, all birthdays, and about 3-4 weeks in summer for fun camps. Sometimes we do science camp and I record in our portfolio for that.

 

Frequently we seem to have a lot of short days so we need the extra time. We also have therapies, remediation, and acceleration to tackle so it's hard to fit a mold anyway.

[Chris in VA]

We didn't have a 180 day requirement, but I wanted to finish each year's curriculum. We schooled 5 days a week, and sometimes dh would take ds on a field trip on dh's Monday off.

I took off Monday holidays, 2 weeks at Christmas, Holy Week and the Monday after, and some other days here and there, and had a chunk of time in the summer.

 

I love summer break, and I know many don't. Maybe it's years of public school, IDK, but I need a break, my kids needed a break, and I think it's healthy to have unstructured time. My kids all continued exploring and reading in the summers, and (when the boys were small and we didn't homeschool) they needed swim time, time with friends, at least of week of family vacation, etc. It's different for homeschoolers and it's different for those who have 2 parents working, but I needed time to reconnect with the boys after they'd been gone in school all day, and 9 weeks of summer did that for us.

[Baile]

In our state, we have to maintain attendance records, but there is a required number of hours per grade level, not days. 

 

I record attendance for each child individually, and mark them "present" every day that they do school work or participate in something else especially educational. We always take a 2-3 week break over Christmas and a vacation with Dh's family in March, but otherwise adjust our schedule as we go. I always record how much time they spend, to make sure we meet the required number of hours, and so I don't feel like I'm cheating by giving credit for a school day that only lasted an hour. We record well over 180 days of school per year, but a very reasonable number of hours. 

[J&JMom]

I live in Texas where I don't need to keep track, but I do anyways because that is just who I am.  We have 167 days scheduled and barring any illness or drama, we plan to school 167 days.  Our school district plans 177 days.  I figure the field trips on the weekends fill in those gaps. Field trips during the week count as a school day. We have gone on 16 field trips so far this year*.  We start mid-Aug and go to Memorial Day with 1 week off for Columbus day, spring Break and another spring week as well as 3 weeks for Christmas.  The only 4 day weeks scheduled are for Labor Day and next week Presidents Day simply because we have a trip planned for that weekend.  Our days are 7 hours long with 30-minute lunch breaks. Summer is still daily read aloud, a novel study with each boy (1-2 books a summer), independent reading, Mad Libs, and critical thinking company games. None of that is 'school', just life. 

* 7 of those field trips were on a weekend.  Plays and museum special exhibits count - camping trips and "fun" scout stuff does not such as roller skating bowling or go karts, except for the nature preserve campout with classes - that was school! However, I do count homeschool group fun days (only 2-3 days a year) as school if they occur during regularly planned school day.  I don't consider a trip to the grocery store school (unless it was that time we watched the sushi lady make her stuff as part of our Japanese culture project). I have my own quirky definitions of what is 'school' versus 'just fun'.

Edited February 10, 2016 by J&JMom

[MinivanMom]

I like to finish the first half of the year before Christmas break, so I usually count back to figure out our starting date in August. Somehow it feels better to me to do 18 weeks of school before Christmas and 18 weeks after Christmas. We also do an extra 37th week at the end of the school year for our required standardized testing. We usually take a week off at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, and a week in the spring to go on vacation. Most years we start the second week of August and are done by Memorial Day. On years when we plan to take a fall vacation, we just start school a week earlier in the summer.

 

Theoretically, that should put us at 185 days, but we only ever complete 180 or 181 with all the Monday holidays during the year.

[kirstenhill]

Our state law doesn't require homeschoolers to count a certain number of hours or days, and even the public schools don't have to get to 180 in my state (it is by hours for the public schools, and it only works out to something like 160 days for elementary and 170 for secondary). We aim for 34 weeks and most of those are five day weeks. We have maybe a couple of Monday holidays, but that might be offset by some Saturdays that are spent on things that would be considered a "field trip" if we had done it on a week day (science museum, etc). Some weeks may have a day we don't do book work, but the PS counts field trips, etc as school days too.

 

If we had to count 180, I doubt I would do anything different to our actual school year, since we are typically able to complete most if not all of our curricula in that 34 week time frame. I would probably count as half days some of the days we do in the summer where we do just math review and reading...or count days when my kids are in academic or sports related camps and classes during the summer.

Edited February 11, 2016 by kirstenhill

[abacus2]

IMHO, any day the children are in the house and awake counts as a school day, whether we open a textbook or not.

 

This is the same way schools count days. School days are days kids are in the building. Field days, assembly days, days a fire alarm keeps you out of the building during all available classtime, days the teacher gives up and re-does yesterday's lesson to address class-wide confusion, days the kids go home early because a water main broke, days when half the school population is absent due to illness, half days where all the kids actually do is pick up report cards, etc. all count as school days. The school systems in my area also have an average of 10 snow days built into their calendar to take as needed. Each student is allowed several sick days before there is a problem.

 

The idea that 180 days of school means doing a 180 day curriculum is not the reality of school days.

[athomeontheprairie]

This is the same way schools count days. School days are days kids are in the building. Field days, assembly days, days a fire alarm keeps you out of the building during all available classtime, days the teacher gives up and re-does yesterday's lesson to address class-wide confusion, days the kids go home early because a water main broke, days when half the school population is absent due to illness, half days where all the kids actually do is pick up report cards, etc. all count as school days. The school systems in my area also have an average of 10 snow days built into their calendar to take as needed. Each student is allowed several sick days before there is a problem.

 

The idea that 180 days of school means doing a 180 day curriculum is not the reality of school days.

I nanny for a little girl who does half day k. Several days this year she's had half days. What does that look like? 2 hours 45 minutes in the bus. One and a half hours being at school (includes getting off/on bus, bathroom, getting to class and recess)

 

Yeah, that's a productive use of a day.

[IfIOnly]

Hm. Our state doesn't require a certain amount of days, and either do I. For example, my kids grammar curriculum is 120 lessons. Their math is about the same. Spelling is 100 lessons.  When they finish something, that's it for that subject (besides math games, letter writing, and memory work once a week) until the next year. They fill the rest of their days on hobbies, personal education interests, and play. 

[lanabug]

My state requires the equivalent of 180 days or 1080 hours, but we are not required to keep attendance records. We start school the first Monday in August, and sorta-kinda follow the public school calendar. We don't take all the holidays they do.  We only take a week for Christmas break, but we're much more likely to take days off in the spring semester when the weather is warm. This year, I'm trying to finish our core work by the end of April so we can take the early summer to do a science and art "intensive" - i.e. do all the stuff we can't seem to get to during the rest of the year.  On average, we do about 220 days of school each year - but that includes co-op, days we didn't do bookwork but had piano or gymnastics, field trips, etc. 

 

Lana

[Critterfixer]

I schedule 40 weeks for a 4.5 day school week. We have four terms of 10 weeks each. 

[Heidi]

I try to be super flexible because fun things are always coming up.  I school year round, but I try to give us a month in the summer between school years.  We do a 4 day week for 36 weeks.  I schedule tentatively ahead.  For instance if one month was super busy, I know I need to get at least so many weeks in the next month to stay on schedule.  Sometimes we school on Saturday if our week was busy.

 

 

Edited February 11, 2016 by Heidi

[kalusignan]

I didn't read all the comments but wanted to say a couple things:

 

Field trips totally count as a school day! They count in traditional school, so why wouldn't they count in homeschool?

 

Our day today:

Bible reading, devotional, and read aloud time over breakfast

Fire station field trip/tour followed by valentine's party with friends

Afternoon art project

Finishing our measurement of the length of Noah's ark on our street

 

I had to leave a lot of boxes unchecked today (which has been known to make my left eye twitch), but I'm STILL counting this as a school day! Why wouldn't I?

 

 

That being said, my state doesn't require a certain number of days. I 'schedule' 210 days (180 school year and 30 for summer school) of 'school' per year, using a 6 week on/1 week off schedule. I include days like today, and I never have a problem being able to finish a year's worth of curriculum. In fact, we usually finish around late April, so then we get to do fun stuff. This year, we're planning on learning to play chess and doing a lot of nature walks when the weather is nice.

 

 

Hubby jokes that we should take off the days leading up to and during Aunt Floo's visit. Though it would mean losing the 6 week mid year break he says they kids may have a higher survival rate. :p

 

 

I've seriously considered this recently because I get so fatigued and lose all semblance of patience for a week every month.  :tongue_smilie:

[MerryAtHope]

We do 4.5 days per week (Friday afternoons are friend days) and take off time as we want/need for special occasions, holidays, vacations (some years we do one in September, some years not), etc... We start in mid-July and go through the end of May or whenever we have about 180 days in. Some years it might be 176, some 183...

[Momling]

With two of my kids at public school, my lone homeschooler has to follow the public school schedule. Otherwise, there would be grumblings about why she has to work when they get a Spring break or a teacher in-service day or whatever.

[3 ladybugs]

If I count every day that my son is learning at least one subject (and not just living life and learning in general) I bet my son has about 300 days of education a year. 

 

My husband teaches Science and History. So he can only do that on the weekends and at night. So even if I can't do school during the day, at least something happens at night. My son is in a German school for Saturdays for 2.5 hours. So even if nothing else gets done he is in school then. Combine this with other things and how I normally plan 5 day a week education for him (not always does it all get done but we try). Combine all of this and I bet he only really has about 60-90 days off a year... depending on how many trips we take and how much we go camping. LOL

 

I am glad I don't need to keep track. I think it would drive me a bit nuts.