up till what grade can you do 4 day weeks

[workingmom]

This was my first year hs my (almost 7 yo) 2nd grader. Because I work PT, we decided to do a 4 day week. Which actually only ends up with school work four mornings. I do PT enrollment for music and art which he gets on Thursday afternoons. The fourth day is pretty light usually just the basics of Handwriting and Math, maybe if we didn't finish up a history or science project that goes there. He spends a large part of the hs afternoons reading, doing games, playing sports or hanging out. (we don't do TV and have limited computer time)

 

It really has been a blessing and easy to hs this year. He skipped a grade and we're right on track and doing well. I guess the two weekday mornings that I go to work he gets his foreign language in at the sitters and then plays there or reads. She has other homeschoolers and afterschool kids as well.

 

We had always planned to hs one year and get him to be independent and challenge him. He loves it, we're doing cool field trips, etc. After listening to the other parents, I really don't see the point of returning him to his private school as most of them are doing essentially a lot of afterschooling. So my dh asked me what the plan was for next year and I told him I was leaning just to keep him home and continue what we're doing.

 

Dh seems to think the higher grades will require more time (which I'm sure they will but I was thinking like middle school grades) Is third grade really going to require hours more of school or will I just be able to tweak the work and continue on. So far my job doesn't seem like the hours will increase that drastically anytime soon. So assuming I still go to work two weekdays, how long (up to which grade) have you kept up 4 day a week schedules.

 

Thanks,

[coffeefreak]

I think it really depends on what your goals are and what options are available to you. I know people who work full time and homeschool their kids. They stick with A Beka because it's very scripted and there's no prep involved. They choose to school 5 days a week. I also have a very good friend who's husband owns his own business. She takes Mondays to go to the office and pay people, file etc. Then, she's "on-call" the rest of the week. It's demanding, but she's able to do it. They use Sonlight's 4 day schedule and love it. It's planned out, but her older child can do a lot of her work independently. If your son is motivated and independent, you're half way there.

 

When I try to plan for more than 4 days, life happens. Someone gets sick, we have to go to the grocery store, we don't make it through all the assignments and I'm not sure where to reschedule etc.

 

Another thing to consider is, how much can your husband help you with? Can you give "homework" and expect it to get done? Is Saturday school an option?

 

I personally think you can do 4 day school the whole way through. After all, college classes aren't 5 days a week, and some high schools have had to go upper grades am/lower grades pm because of over crowding. It just takes some creativity. The beauty of Homeschooling is, it can look like whatever your family needs it to look like.

 

Blessings!

Dorinda

[Ellie]

I don't see why you can't do that forever. I suppose if you're trying to keep to a September to June school year you might find it difficult, but surely out of 365 days you can manage to get everything in doing 4 days a week.

[Karen in CO]

I work 3 days a week - 12 hour days so I have always homeschooled 4 days a week. My state requires 172 days, and I aim for 180 days of school. I keep a calendar and count the days as we go. We don't stop until we get to 180. I continue math, copywork (in the younger years), and required reading year-round so that we never have to back up very far in those subjects. Later, we will continue foreign language year-round for the same reason. Some weeks, we even manage to get in the required minimum school work before I go work.

 

Once my ds was in middle school, I just gave him work that could be completed independently for the day I was gone and I counted it toward our school days only if it was enough work for a full-day (so often it would take two of my off work days for him to get a full school day).

 

In highschool, I always assigned papers on my work days so that I could be sure he wasn't just goofing off. The important thing is to make sure you have a clear definition of what constitutes a school day whether or not you are there to supervise it.

[workingmom]

since we hs year round, i'm not concerned about getting things done. i actually like planning and and don't get consumed by it. we are basically hs year round since i want the make sure the retention is there. i guess i was just wondering if people actually hs 4 days up to middle school. our state only makes you sign something that says you did the hours and some type of evaluation at the end. so its laid back really.

 

so far ds is good about doing the little bit of homework (one page in spelling book) i just do it do get him in practice.

 

i'm just thinking one year at a time. so we'll see how far it can continue.

[Heather in Neverland]

We do 4 day weeks year round. Always have. Will probably continue until 9th grade when we will most likely need more time in our week. Maybe I'll go to 4.5 days then! :D

[mcconnellboys]

Well, I hsed my older son through ninth grade doing mostly a four day week. We did do a little work on Fridays, but left that day more open to finish up things not completed earlier in the week, take field trips, etc.

 

I've been doing light Fridays with my younger son, too, since starting with him. That consisted of virtually nothing in the lower grade levels, but now that he's in logic stage, we do a little more.

 

I should say that we also do things outside the house on other days of the week that don't get factored in when I'm planning and so disrupt what I had planned to get done that day. And this has always been true. This is one reason that Fridays light helps us have time to catch up things we didn't do earlier in the week.

 

I will also say that we tend to do school from 8-3 (or a little later) with some consistency, so we are working longer than some folks on the days we do work.

[Amber in AUS]

My plan is 4 days a week year round. I think you can make it work.

[workingmom]

wow, that's just what i needed, someone to say yep it can be done successfully. regena and heather do you mind posting a quick note as to which subjects or books you use. so i can compare the coursework. feel free to let me know if i have any serious gaps for 3rd grade

 

right now (2nd grade)we have

1.math (singapore)

2. handwriting without tears (will start cursive in two weeks after our

vacation)

3. scott foresman grammar (likely go up to something more texbookish)

after we finish 2nd grade (looking into grammar/LA curriculum)

4. religious studies (sunday school and maybe some reading in the

evenings)

5. foreign language

6. sotw (once a week, or one chapter one day and the wb the next day)

7. science usually unit study based (kind of make my own thing up with

library books and projects) once a week

8. Wordly Wise for vocab

9. Spelling workout

10, primary analogies

11. reading comprehension by irvine

12. art and music on thursday

 

one sport a season, lots of independent reading, bicycle riding, and hanging out with cousins (on the weekends).

 

i think its a solid curriculum, the stuff we do daily is hw, math, and LA, spelling split up with one unit a week, and same for wordly wise. he's a fantastic reader so he likes that he can spend the afternoon reading for an hour or two.

 

thanks for all the posts

[Mandy in TN]

Another vote for 4 days/ week year round. This is what I plan to do with my little guy- although I may school light during June and July.

 

My big guys are from a previous marriage. They have typically taken off most of June and July to spend time with their dad. We take off the week of Thanksgiving, 2 weeks at Christmas, and a week for spring break. They school about 45 weeks each year, but only 36 of the weeks are heavy.

 

We go to a tutorial on Monday and school Tues-Fri. Sometimes we need to school on Sat to stay where we need to be in our schedule, but I figure that kids in a traditional high school have homework over the weekends.;)

 

OTOH my oldest, who is a junior, is almost entirely outsourced this year and so he is learning time management in dealing with other instructors' schedules. In the fall he went to an all day tutorial on Mondays for Spanish, journalism, and to hang out with friends; a math tutor on Tuesday afternoons; Kumon math on Thursday afternoons; and a 3hour American History class at the community college in the middle of the day on Friday. Although he was out of the house all day on Monday and much of the day on Friday, he seldom did work over the weekends.

 

If you wanted to school 4 days/ week and only do 36 weeks each year, then as your ds gets older (say junior high or high school) y'all may would need to stick to the basic subjects of Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science. Then, put in more time for each subject during those 4 days in order to complete a full course in one 36 week school year.

 

HTH-

Mandy

[Closeacademy]

We love our 4-day year round schooling schedule. Fridays we have a fun co-op and playgroup. In the summer we take every other Tuesday off for field trips and picnics with our friends.

 

My children are now 1st and 3rd and I have stepped things up a little this January and am starting to test the "homework" waters with my oldest to push her into a little more independence. My goal is that by high school, she has a checklist of things to do for the week and turns in her completed work to me weekly to grade.

 

I hope things continue to work well for you and it sounds like you have a good curriculum plan going.:001_smile:

[Jen in PA]

I think it depends very much on how independent the student is... and it should work out nicely that workload and independence tend to increase together. Since I live in a state that allows school to be counted in either hours or days, most homeschoolers I know manage to count a fifth day just fine as long as they counsider PE activities, music lessons, etc. as making it a school day.

[KarenC]

But June and July are lighter months and we do take a week off during the summer.

For example, during the month of June we usually do math, reading, read alouds, writing, Spanish, and music practice. We usually drop history, science, grammar, and spelling during June and slowly pick them back up in July.

 

Karen

[Paisley Hedgehog]

nm

[MerryAtHope]

We don't worry about days per week, we just count days. We school mid-July through the end of May or whenever we finish that year!

 

Merry :-)

[Stacy in NJ]

It really really depends on how productive your days are and what you're long term expectations are.

 

Prior to this year we did 4 days per week. I found as my oldest approached 6th grade it just wasn't enough. Not enough time for both history and science. Not enough time for language arts.

 

I think 4 days is probably enough for almost all 3rd graders. I would evaluate at the end of each year.

[Janet in Toronto]

I homeschooled for Grades 4 and 5. We did a four day schedule for both grades, but did field trips or library research on Fridays so still counted that as a school day. If we had continued in to Grade 6, I would have stuck with the same schedule as we had no problem completing the year's curriculum in four 9am-2pm days per week (the last hour of which was silent reading for English/History).