Week long break better than 5 single days?

[Jennifer in CO]

I'm planning next school year's schedule. This time I'm going to schedule a mid-winter week long break, in Feb. However, I'm wondering if it is better for students to have 5 single days off spread throughout the winter instead of week of break. Any thoughts?

Thanks

[freesia]

For us it is--partially bc a lot of curriculum is on a 5 day rotation. However, when those one days come by, I am a bit wistful. When the week comes, though, I am thrilled. It is nice to have regular breaks.

[Julie Smith]

How about you let your kids choose? Or perhaps give them each a ticket or two that will let them cancel school for the day. To be used whenever they want. 

[Jennifer in CO]

freesia

We also use TOG so making the week shorter is difficult.  This year we are doing an enrichment style co-op so it'll be interesting to try to get TOG and that to gell.  

Julie

Your idea has some merit-- I'll have to ponder the ticket idea.

[Arcadia]

We do week long break because it is easier to go on a short road trip or for kids to join their public school friends for winter/spring break camp. For example we drove down to Legoland and stayed a few days there.

[EKS]

We never took single days off because it would throw off the weekly cycle of some of the lessons.

[marbel]

It depends on your family and what you like/need.

 

A 5-day break, all in one chunk, can give more of a feeling of a break, you can travel (as a pp said), you might come back to school more refreshed and ready to get back to work.

 

Five random days off spread throughout the year can add some fun and spontaneity to the school year.  

 

If I chose the 5 days spread throughout the year, I'd fiddle with the curriculum to make it work out.  Skip some part of a lesson, or have a longer day with it here and there, or find some other way to make the curriculum work for you.

[Alte Veste Academy]

For us, a week off is refreshing, but a single day off is disruptive. Individual days here and there feel random and give my kids the feeling of school as optional. We always have greater resistance to school during weeks with days off.

[Rachel]

I personally prefer week long breaks but we do occasionally have a single day break due to illness, a field trip, or family visiting. The week gives us all a chance to reset. A single day break at the beginning of the week tends to mess up our rhythm but I think it could be great for some families.

[rebcoola]

Neither I really like to do a two day breaks that result in long weekends. 

[3 ladybugs]

I am sort of doing both. I figured out a way that we can do no more then 4 day weeks and space them so my son is doing 4 days on, a weekend, 4 days on, 4 days off, repeat. It makes it so with our prescheduled vacations (half of November, a few days off for Christmas, a week at easter or when his paternal grandparents come out) that he is starting August 1 and going to the end of June. However I hope he is happier with this set up. That is 180 days. 

[8filltheheart]

For our family both the kids and I can push through and be more productive if we know we have a week of down time. Days off are just frittered away.

[freelylearned]

We follow the local school schedule and we used to have a lot of 3 day weekend scattered throughout January and February but recently we switched to a full week off in February instead of the scattered 3 day weekends. We like the week off much better. It's so nice to have a week off not tied to a holiday.

[theelfqueen]

I would go for two or three single days and one long weekend 4-5 days ... so we could go to the mountains or something.

[BooksandBoys]

My kids, especially my oldest, do best with predictable routine. If we take three days off is school in a row, the return to schooling is at least three days filled with tantrums, frustration, and convinction thst everything is too hard. To that end, single days don't help at all. If we are going to take time off, I opt to save up for a full week. The week off makes the three hard days when we start back somewhat worth it. Honestly, though, I rarely take time off at all for this reason. Even over the holidays, we maintain a bare minimum school schedule most days. My patterns will likely change as they get older, but consistency is what works for us right now.

[JumpyTheFrog]

My kids, especially my oldest, do best with predictable routine. If we take three days off is school in a row, the return to schooling is at least three days filled with tantrums, frustration, and convinction thst everything is too hard. 

 

My oldest was (probably still is) like this. In fact, about 1/3 of the way into 3rd grade I realized that Monday was consistently the worst day of the week because his attitude was so terrible after having the weekend off from school. I decided the solution was school everyday for the rest of the year. He ended up with 267 days of school that year.

 

Last year, for 4th grade, I went back to taking weekends off, because the school every day (except maybe Christmas and Thanksgiving) was killing me. I think he ended up with 220 days for 4th grade. This year, for 5th grade, I am going to try 3 weeks on and 1 week off, but it might end up being a disaster.

[blackjackoaktree]

I used to do 6 weeks x 5 days each and then a week off between year round (and all of July off) but that just ended up a mess for us once I started having some kids home and some in public school.

 

I am debating this now because this summer was so busy, we just got no bookwork done. I have a public high schooler and now one homeschooled is entering public high school, so he wasn't about to do anything but scout stuff this summer.

 

Also, I've run into a lot of people that just basically take the entire month of December off of heavy book work and just focus on holiday related things (Christian religious holidays and pagan holidays mostly) and do volunteer work or focus on 4H stuff.  I don't know if I could do that.

 

 

[Jennifer in CO]

Well, I've decided to go with the week long break.  An odd day off here or there would mess with our curriculum too much and a week will probably seem more luxurious. I also asked my retired public school teacher aunt and cousin who is a principal.  They both voted for a week break.  

 Either way we can't really go any where; I have 2 kids dipping into the public school for a class.