How We Started
When we first started homeschooling, I chose to follow a traditional “school year” starting in early September and ending in the beginning of June every year. This meant that we took the summers off of school. We had five days a week of school for about 9 months and then nothing for three months. This is what I was familiar with, and so I chose to follow that same pattern. It is my understanding that this is still the way that the majority of school children spend their year.
One of the things that I love about homeschooling is that you, the parent, are in charge! You can do things the same way you were raised or the same way others around you are doing it. Or you can create your own way of doing it. As long as you are completing what needs to be done, it doesn’t matter how you go about it! For some of you the traditional school year works great. You dive into school during one part of the year, and you get an extended vacation from it through the summer. This might be helpful if you want to travel as a family in the summer or if you and your kids just need a break from school!!
Problems We Discovered
We found over time that there were some problems with this schedule for our family. It seemed that over the three months off my children forgot a lot of the things they had learned in school; this is especially true of math. Once we jumped back into it in September, I spent a few months reviewing and reteaching these things before we could move on to new information. This was discouraging to the kids and frustrating for me, the teacher.
Another dilemma that I ran into is that I was so busy during the weekdays of the school years that I did not have a lot of time for other housewife activities. It was hard to find the time to go grocery shopping or other outings, and even time for cleaning, gardening, or fall canning was limited. I wanted to run an organized, efficient household, not just a homeschool!!
Rearranging the Schedule
So, we rearranged our schedule. For quite a few years we have used this revised schedule and have found it to solve the above problems quite well. We have chosen to do “year-around” school. This is what it looks like for our family. We start our school year (the next grade for each child) in May. Throughout the summer we have school three days a week except when we are traveling for vacation. Then in September we bump it up to four days a week all the way through to the end of April, which is when we usually complete the curriculum for the year. Then we take approximately two weeks off before beginning all over again with the next grade level.
The advantages of this system are that we only ever at the most have four days of school each week. This gives me one or two “free” weekdays to get other things done. The kids do not have so much down time during the summer and don’t forget as much. In fact, we have skipped over some of the review in some curriculums that is present probably because of the summer forgetfulness element! We still have some extra time off in the summer but don’t get away from it completely. We also still have time in the summer to get away as a family.
Some things that some people might not like about this schedule are the following: You don’t get a complete, lengthy break from school. At least the way we do it, you don’t get a long Christmas or Spring Break. (We usually plow through those times of year to allow us the time in the summer to travel.) It might seem like everyone else is taking a break while we are still having school in the summer. (However, I feel that this is offset with us being “off” an extra day every week during the school year.) Also, it does get a little tricky to be doing school and then take a two week vacation in the summer, and then sit down and try to do school again. I try to be careful not to expect them to take a test the day they get back, for example.
How it Worked for us this Year
This summer is an example of the way this schedule works for us. We graduated one child in the beginning of May before starting our next school year. We have just returned from a wonderful family vacation of almost 3 weeks, traveling through 14 states and seeing family, friends, and Yellowstone National Park. Now we are back to three days a week school while gardening and just beginning our canning. We are already 25 lessons into the school year!
Every year is a little different. I look at the calendar ahead of time and think about what trips we have planned or when we might need extra time off. Sometimes we have more months of three days a week and sometimes we cut it short and do more four days a week months to complete everything by the end of the year. We also take more time off between grades some years than others. Remember, scheduling is supposed to work for you and benefit you, not drive and enslave you!
I know our way of scheduling the school year will not work for every family. But, hopefully, this blog article has made you think outside the box about how you can work your own schedule to benefit your family and solve any problems that you have found along the way. Please comment below and let me know what your homeschool schedule looks like. What has worked for you?
Jen, thank you for writing this article. I’ve never heard “year round” schooling explained as clearly as this article. I can see how this approach would give your family flexibility and time to get household tasks done. I love the flexibility that homeschooling allows.
Last year, I plowed through the year just in an effort to get done early. That approach didn’t gain us much other than weariness of school. This year, I’m planning on the Sabbath approach–6 weeks on, 1 week off. My kids and I both need a more sustainable pace.