Year-round Pacing

[PQuinn]

We're new to this and I had a possibly dumb question. In the book, there are lots of helpful suggestions for how much time to spend per subject, per day, but I am unclear about whether those amounts of time are set with a relatively conventional school year in mind. We're intending to go more or less year-round, with breaks as needed and, with that in mind, I'm wondering if I should pare off a quarter of those recommended daily amounts.

If, as I suspect, this has already been stated somewhere, please forgive me!

 

[daijobu]

I'm a big fan of schooling year round.  It offers flexibility to take a slower pace when needed and to accommodate unexpected emergencies where you might need to take time off.  

I did not "prorate" my subject time.  I adjusted the time spent on subjects solely based on what my students could tolerate.  Then we just worked day to day at that pace.  If we ended up a little ahead of schedule, that's terrific.  

 

[Shoeless]

Hmm.  It's true that we generally do spend fewer hours per day on formal studies thanks to year-round schooling.  It wasn't part of the design, however.  We work until we feel mentally "done" with seat-work. 

We usually end up spending an hour on each subject, but do not cover every subject every day. For my child, I found that less than an hour per subject meant very shallow engagement with the topic. I would rather cover fewer subjects deeply and leave space for independent reading, rather than many subjects covered in a box-checking or shallow way. 

[Sarah0000]

We just keep going at full pace unless we have a reason to slow down. This helps because it gives me time to cover the vast majority of our schooling the way I want for each subject for each kid, plus I have time to squeeze in the more public schooly, state testing type material.

[Lecka]

I would prorate if the reason for doing year round is seeing that — “okay, we can’t do this pace, we need to take it easier, so let’s do year round and not stress out.”

Something people mention too is spending a month here and there doing something interest led or focusing on a project or something.  You could decide you want to do that if you’re getting through things well and don’t just want to  move ahead to the next step of the curriculum.  People also mention stretching out/adding to places where their kids are very interested and excited.  That could be worked in anytime in the year.  And — could be done anyway and just decide to cut something from another part of the curriculum.

Things I have seen often will say somewhere “based on an x-week school year.”  You could also look at how many weeks are allowed for in the schedule you are looking at, to see how many weeks they are using when they schedule lessons.  Maybe?  

[73349]

I do year-round (~220 days) in order to have a short school day and no long breaks. 

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by Carolina Wren