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How do you decide when you are going to go on break?


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We're very early on the homeschooling journey--I'm not sure I'd call us homeschoolers yet, although we do short dedicated math and reading lessons--but my plan goes like this.

 

We have to school for 36 weeks by state law (when we eventually file).

 

Six terms that are six weeks each seems like a good amount of time to focus on certain themes or units. Each six week term will be followed by one week off.

 

That leaves us with an additional ten weeks of break. So we will take off one entire month every six months: the months of June and December.

 

We'd still have 1 or 2 weeks left over after that. Those will probably be used as sick days.

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Umpteen yrs ago when we first started, I didn't create a formal school calendar and decided we would just take breaks as needed. I never felt comfortable taking long breaks and the kids couldn't look forward to specific vacation days.

 

Then one yr I made the decision to actual create a calendar. 6 weeks on followed by 1 week off. All regular Dr appts, major shopping, cleaning, etc were scheduled during that week off. It was so much more relaxing. The kids worked harder bc they knew they had a break to look forward to. I love that schedule. I haven't been able to follow it the past few,yrs bc of my older kids' college schedules and wanting to spend time with them when they are on break, but it is still by far my favorite.

 

I still create a school calendar. I pull up everyone's schedules and build ours around their pre-existing ones. Sometimes we get off track (like right now. We are taking 2 unscheduled weeks off bc we are moving, but I am just shifting our end date by 2 weeks.) But everyone knowing school vs break days seems to keep all of us more productive in the long run.

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My kids really, REALLY don't do well with unstructured time, so I put off breaks as long as possible.

 

This year we are hosting an extended family Christmas party on the 23rd, so there is quite a bit I need to get done in the next two weeks.  It would be wonderful to say we are taking those weeks off, but ultimately the kids would go off the rail and it would end up being much more stressful for me.  Instead, over the coming weeks I will drop some of their subjects as we hit nice stopping spots, and I will replace them in the daily schedule with chores or fun, independent work.

 

Our last day of school will be the 21st, we will start a light school schedule again on the 26th, and school will be fully back in session on the 1st of January.

 

Wendy

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We schedule our big breaks to coincide with the local volleyball club schedule which is an all year thing. The club schedule follows the local school schedule so it is a big break in winter, a week in fall, two weeks in spring, and two months in summer. If we aren't going anywhere then we school for at least part of the breaks because there seems to be little point in just sitting around the house. 

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We start as early as possible in July because it is hot as heck anyway, after that I aim for breaks about every 6 weeks. I try to coincide with the holidays when possible, our first two sessions this year were 7 wks so the second break would match with Thanksgiving. Now, we just have 4 wks of work until we do another week break for Christmas. I've found this works the best for us.  I can't go much longer than 7 wks without everyone getting all antsy and things falling behind, I use breaks to catch up on cleaning and appointments. 

 

I usually do 1 wk breaks but sometimes do 2 wks in the fall or at Christmas, depending on how early we get started and how everything works out. We don't really do a spring break because I schedule us to start early so we can be done by the time the weather really starts to get nice. We like to have off in the spring, it feels like a special treat to be done before anyone else.

 

After we officially finish the year we take off completely 2-4 wks but then start with summer work to keep the brain fresh and a little bit of structure, reading time(kids pick) and some math practice (online or games- generally no official curriculum or if it is we just do short lessons). 

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Outside activities and our habits.

 

 

I know we take the week off Thanksgiving because my parents visit that week.

 

We take 3 at Christmas, because the week before Christmas I bake and wrap, and don't like the stress of fitting it around school. The week between Christmas and New Year's, my dh is off from work so it's a fun family week. And the week after, I pack up Christmas decorations and clean the house and get my head back in the school game.

 

We take a week in the Spring, and I pick that by lining up all the boys' calendars and seeing which one has the least obligations and we go with that one.

 

Those are our only 3 planned breaks.

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My dh works at a college and gets the traditional school breaks off: 2 days at Thanksgiving, 2 weeks at Christmas, 3 days for Spring Break, Labor day, etc.

 

We take our breaks following his schedule. When the kids were younger, we'd take more days off during the year, but my high schooler takes 3 classes that I don't run (online and at a tutorial.). It's not worth taking a day off if he still has to go to those classes or do homework from them, so for the past 2 years, we've stayed pretty much on schedule.

 

I'd love to do ao 6 week on, 1 week off schedule, but my son would still be stuck doing Chem, Alg II, and Spanish on that week off, so it's not worth it.

 

In the early years, I used to schedule time off for the major holidays, and then add in about 2-3 days a month for "random days off".

Edited by Garga
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Mostly when it suits me and mine. I keep a light schedule plan in case we just need a break but maybe not a full week or something like that. I'm going to have to rethink it for high-school though. Right now I don't feel bad about letting science or history slip in favor of a documentary or reading on something interesting, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to be a little less relaxed about that next year. Still--maybe I can have lighter science days with more reading, or have a few study days for review that might work.

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Typically, we follow the same schedule as the local public school. My daughter is in 10th grade in PS so it really simplifies things for us. But even when she homeschooled as well, we tended to loosely follow their schedule. We would start two weeks before them so weĂ¢â‚¬â„¢d have more days off, but we would end at the same time. This worked well with their friends schedule, summer camp, family vacations, etc.

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During the two years that I wasn't working at all outside the home, I tried to maintain a schedule of 6 weeks on, 1 week off , much like 8FilltheHeart.  I really liked that schedule.  We also took off time to go on holidays (one month in the winter) and I tried to have the one week off coincide with things like the winter public school break and the spring public school break so that they had time to spend with their public school friends (if it didn't coincide we usually just ended up taking a day off here and there).

 

Now that I am have been working for the last couple of years, albeit part time, we tend to take a break whenever it feels like we need one.  We took a lot of time off this summer, and we usually don't.  I just didn't have the energy to do much this summer.  Right now we've been going pretty much daily since the start of September but it seems like one day per week is usually lost (in an academic sense) to something (park day, appointments, errands that just can't get done during the evening etc) so we are going to continue until close to Christmas and take a week off then and probably just plod on through until near the end of March when we'll probably take another week off.  So, much like the public school year around here this year.

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We basically follow the local PS schedule, except that we finish a month earlier. Ă°Å¸Å½â€°Ă°Å¸Å½Ë†Ă°Å¸Å½â€°

 

We do often skip their March break in order to take other time off for travelling, etc.

Edited by indigoellen@gmail.com
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We have always (loosely) followed the public school schedule. All of the kids' activities follow the school schedule so it just makes life easier. We don't take all the half-days and random holidays that the the schools take. Instead we take a full week off at Thanksgiving, two full weeks at Christmas, and longer breaks whenever we're sick or want to take a vacation.

 

I like having a schedule for our year. It gives us all a break to look forward to, and I can schedule appointments and stuff for a time when it won't mess up our whole homeschooling day.

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Right now our routine is that we do homeschool any weekday morning that we're home and is not a holiday.  We like to go camping so we take that time off any time it comes up and I don't worry about taking days off to go do day trips.  I try to keep all activities/classes or appointments scheduled in the afternoon.  Since my kids are elementary aged right now I don't schedule out our work so if we're feeling tired or need a bit of a break I just adjust on the fly but we still do mom planned things during that time.  

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I set up a calendar for the school year during the summer.  I plan out our breaks ahead of time.  There have been a few, very few, times I have deviated from this for illness, death in the family, etc., but typically my kids do much better with a planned out school year.

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Like all things homeschool related- I have a plan (written in pencil) that is subject to change (hence the pencil, lol...) Middle school has felt more structured overall than elementary was, when we took breaks whenever we felt like it and schooled year round. Now it feels like we just have so many activities, so if we have to do all the extras, I might as well keep doing school. So that when the activity breaks, I can take a real break from everything. This is mostly for me.

 

It is feeling much more schoolish these days, with a long summer break we all seem to desperately need after the busyness of the school year and activities, a short fall and spring break, and a Christmas break. Sometimes we blow off a day or two here or there or double up somewhere to free up a day if we just need one. I try to end each subject at a good place, and not mid chapter or anything. So if something is at a good stopping point we might drop that subject and wrap up everything else, even if we are not officially breaking yet.

 

My kids can last much longer without a break than when they were younger too, I have noticed. But if everyone needs a break and we can all feel it, then we take a day or two. Because life, you know? Everyone was feeling it this week as we sludge towards the finish line and the Christmas break. So I declared yesterday off for St. Nicholas day and they made gingerbread houses and drank hot chocolate and watched too much tv. I am glad we can still do the unscheduled breaks every now and then too. That was a big part of the initial appeal of homeschooling and I don't want to lose it.

Edited by CaliforniaDreaming
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1.  When I start hearing The Nutcracker in my head everywhere I go.   :D   (Two of my kids take Russian ballet and The Nutcracker takes over our lives in November.)

 

2.  When we start running out of schoolwork to do...time to take a break and start a new "semester".

 

3.  When the calendar flips to the month of May.   :glare:   May is awful.  Ballet recital, dress rehearsals, ballet pictures, end-of-year parties, track season starts, gymnastics end-of-year performances, Confirmation graduation...   :svengo:  Man, I'm getting stressed out just thinking about it.

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I fill out my calendar with the dates of our co-ops, field trips, scouts dates, dance recitals, etc. etc. at the beginning of the year. Some subjects I really do want to try to complete in a year like math, so I then fill out the calendar with that, scheduling the lessons in. I put some subjects by the week, like say spelling, do lesson 1 on week 1, etc. I have learned to schedule a week for makeup here and there. 

 

I also put in a fall break. Sometimes the fall break might not end up on the exact dates I planned, but by making time in the schedule for it we don't get "behind" my schedule. Often projects from co-op classes and/or scouts might take more time and we don't get all of our at home done in a day, so the make up comes in handy. 

 

At times like now, we are wrapping up co-ops and parties for the year, meaning my kids will get a break from some of those outside classes. Now we will focus on my subjects at home to wrap up what I want done this semester (notebooks in order, math lessons through where I planned, finish writing those papers they've been dragging their feet on, etc. And we are taking lots of light days right now too. Today was a Christmas party for my two youngers with homeschool group. Teenager did her math, studied for science, and had her piano lesson. Then we all spent time working on Christmas gifts and cards for their co-op teachers, then we spent time on their current home ec project... sewing. So a very light day. Next week we have things going on for two full days, so they will have only 3 days. After that the week of Christmas there will only be read alouds and finishing anything they are behind on. Then they will get a week off between Christmas and New Years. So basically mine will get two weeks off. 

 

That works better for us than longer because we only do 3-4 full days during the school week, with the other day and a half for field trips, enrichment, and such. So year round shorter weeks just fit us better. 

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We had generally scheduled regular breaks:

  • Thanksgiving through about the middle of January;
  • a couple of weeks in late August/early September;
  • a couple of weeks in the spring around Easter.

We took those breaks because:

  • We weren't going to get much done between Thanksgiving and the middle of January, because holiday activities (especially, in the beginning, rehearsals for our church's big, Dickens-era-costume Christmas musical and working on the costumes and all that stuff)
  • it was stinkin' hot in California that time of year, so why not just go to the beach or the zoo or something? Also, schools were starting up, and the beach and the zoo and stuff were suddenly less populated, and we were celebrating not-back-to-school days..
  • I always get spring fever. :D

Other breaks happened as needed (e.g., grandparents visiting, it's Wednesday in March so let's go to Disneyland)

 

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We've done the school schedule up will now other than a couple of offseason family holidays. This year we are doing the slow Wind down as dd has finished a lot of stuff but DS is still going. We will definitely stop by Christmas. Next I plan to do the Mystie Winkler/ 8 fill the heart strategy of six week in 1 week off interval planning. And we have three weeks in the middle of the year for a holiday. We can still fairly easily fit in a 36 week year plus a couple of catch up weeks for the longer programs. I'm hoping this will be more efficient as I often find myself wanting to change things around or chuck everything and do housework around week 6 of each term and then it's a real struggle to keep going. The pitfalls may be that often kids school based friends want to do stuff on the holidays so if they don't coincide it can cause headaches. I think we can make it work though.

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You mean a break as far as holidays and lengthier time off, or a break for an afternoon or a day or two?

 

For the first, we always went along with the public school calendar.  Our family was always very involved with community activities, so it made sense that we stayed on a kind of general community calendar.

 

For the second, it was whenever I thought we needed it.  :)

 

 

 

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My kids don't do well with short breaks - they start wanting to slack off because it's almost break time, and then it's hard to get going again. They also seem to need a few days of being bored before they settle into entertaining themselves. So, we start in early August and go without a break until Thanksgiving week. We come back for 2-3 weeks and then take at least 3 weeks for Christmas. We occasionally travel, but bring books to do in the car so that we don't miss school, or we're doing something educational (like Washington DC). In the spring, we sometimes take spring break and sometimes don't - some years we have to do standardized testing, and some years we travel. We take a very long (2.5 months) summer. My kids read constantly and I occasionally get them to do a few math problems so that they don't forget everything, but summer is mostly dedicated to camps, sports, travel, and, most of the time, reading and playing. During school, we've organized is so that Fridays are usually a light day and so far we haven't carried much over to the weekend, so we get a few school-free days each week.

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I don't plan forbbreaks and we don't need very many really. What I have enjoyed is having 4 day weeks or I would be crazy. I have also enjoyed deciding we had a lot to do on certain days/I didn't feel well and then we just didn't do school. That is awesome to me. It keeps me from getting stresed.

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We have always loosely followed the public school calendar as all of dd's friends are in school and many of her activities follow that calendar.  We do not take off for snow days or random public school off days but I am open to negotiation if something really fun or cool is happening on one of those days.  Dd has two outsourced classes that come close to the public school calendar as well so it just makes sense to loosely stick to that.

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 We take 3 days off for Thanksgiving, 2 weeks at Christmas, plus 2 or 3 mental health days in the spring because at some unspecified day around the Ides of March we have hit our limit. 

 

 We are done by Memorial Day.  My kids know this, want this, and work hard to make this happen. (My oldest two do sports with the local high school, so they have to keep going with that through June, but academic work is done.) 

 

Mentally, year round schooling does not work well for us; we need the feeling of being DONE.  We can't climb Everest without the rush of reaching the summit.

 

BUT, in extenuating circumstances, I would do whatever works *for my family* and still meets the legal requirements.  Year round, 4 day weeks, whatever.

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My oldest (11) canĂ¢â‚¬â„¢t handle breaks. Even Christmas week at grandmaĂ¢â‚¬â„¢s will involve one or two hours of work each weekday. The year he was in 3rd grade was the worst. That year he couldnĂ¢â‚¬â„¢t handle weekends off. I figured it out in November and decided I had to trudge through seven days a week. We did 267 days of school that year.

 

Maybe someday weĂ¢â‚¬â„¢ll be able to take a week off and I can get caught up around here.

Edited by HoppyTheToad
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We took off a couple months when I had a baby. We tend to take off days my spouse is home. We are going on a trip this summer and won't do school then. However, we don't take a lot of long breaks just because: some parts of the year are lighter than others, but they don't tend to do well with long periods of unstructured time and starting school back up then is painful, so mostly, we don't completely stop

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My oldest (11) canĂ¢â‚¬â„¢t handle breaks. Even Christmas week at grandmaĂ¢â‚¬â„¢s will involve one or two hours of work each weekday. The year he was in 3rd grade was the worst. That year he couldnĂ¢â‚¬â„¢t handle weekends off. I figured it out in November and decided I had to trudge through seven days a week. We did 267 days of school that year.

 

Maybe someday weĂ¢â‚¬â„¢ll be able to take a week off and I can get caught up around here.

I have one like this. We school 6 days/week/year round. I refuse to do Sundays. She has breaks to visit relatives, but usually takes something to do. With this child itĂ¢â‚¬â„¢s better to be consistent. Once off her routine, life is horrible. It takes several days for her to Ă¢â‚¬Å“reset.Ă¢â‚¬

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We start earlier than ps because it is just too hot here to do much outside in July. We take the ps breaks as much as possible and then take other breaks as we need them.

 

I make calendars and schedule breaks in but we never end up following them. Life switches our schedule around quite a bit. We still seem to meet our goals each year so I guess it works.

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From Christmas to New YearĂ¢â‚¬â„¢s Eve because both kids donĂ¢â‚¬â„¢t have online or brick and mortar classes. We do road trips if we can decide where to go and find suitable affordable hotels.

 

We do academics during Thanksgiving break to cover for kids falling sick like this week when both kids have the sniffles and arenĂ¢â‚¬â„¢t doing a full load. WeĂ¢â‚¬â„¢ll have to do more work over the weekend to stay on schedule for outsourced classes as well as revise for semester one exams.

Edited by Arcadia
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Normally I lay out all of our materials, plus the schedule for any on-line or local classes and start with the date I want us to be free to take a longer summer break (usually 3 weeks full break for the summer so we can do other things) and I work backwards, determining where a good break might work.  I also work out a week off for Thanksgiving and 2 weeks for Christmas/New Years plus a week off in the Spring.  That is only a guide, though, and I flex as needed.  I found I needed a general guide in place and written up in Homeschool Planet, though, or we did a lot more sliding/flexing than was healthy/productive.  With it all carefully laid out in HP I can shift things around but still clearly see our overall goals and where we have room to shift and change and where we really should try to stay on schedule.

 

For instance, we were supposed to continue with full school through Wednesday of next week but DD has had a REALLY hard, intense week this week with several things due for our stuff plus a lot due for on-line classes that took a lot of her brain power.  She is exhausted and is still working on a mid-term and an essay due today.  She and I talked and she will be stopping everything after today except math and math will only be short daily review lessons (math is hard for her and she forgets quickly if not reviewed).   I looked over what was left, shifted things around so everything will be caught up with in January without overly taxing any of us and within minutes the schedule was adjusted and she and I both felt relief.

 

I did the same for DS.  I looked over what really needed to be done now if possible and shifted the rest to January, broken up so it won't be a huge slog that first week back into full academics.  I gave DS a checklist of things he still needs to finish and once those are done he is also done until we resume full academics in January.  I told him he could do them in any order and as long as I am not working on something that would need to take precedent I will be there.  He is steadily working through and will probably be done by tomorrow or Sunday.

 

Basically, we do better with a schedule that was planned out ahead of time but we take breaks when we have to.  Sometimes for our own mental and physical wellbeing it is just time.

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Outside activities usually force the issue. For the first few years, though, we followed a Ă¢â‚¬Å“if weĂ¢â‚¬â„¢re home, we do SchoolĂ¢â‚¬, even if it was very light, just to keep the consistency. Now, well, DD basically insists on having breaks when her friends do.

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