General Question from newbie re: schedules

[Cekimon]

So I'm on the fence and doing my research right about what path we want to take when it comes to school. I'm really leaning more and more towards homeschool but there's a question I have about it. It's not super important but I'm wondering if you run your schedule on a year -round basis or a traditional type school year? Is this because of the curriculum you've chosen? If you have to report to the state, can they enforce your educating to take place during certain times of the year? I'm just curious how this is handled. It seems like if I were homeschooling, I'd want to take a long winter "break" because of the hectic holidays and then a summer "break" not as long as a traditional summer vacation in most traditional schools.

What do you do?and how it is working for you?

[mom2ponygirl]

Well, you should check your state's regs, but normally if they require anything they require a certain number of 'days' per year. We have often found that periods of excessive heat in the summer are ideal for inside academic pursuits, and that holiday times are stressful enough without worrying about how much 'school' gets done, and that fall and spring are better times for vacations! So, we take breaks when we need them.

[hipumpkins]

I live in NJ so we have no rules around homeschooling. So we don't follow a school year but consider everything we do learning.
We go on vacation in October...I like to (semi)joke that the best part about homeschooling is DisneyWorld in October.

since right now we don't use any structured curriculum we don't start and stop school.

[elizawill]

in my state, we have to homeschool for 180 days out of the year. a lot of homeschoolers "school" year round here and take a lot of breaks throughout the year. we don't school year round though. we took the summer off & i usually take holiday breaks around the same time as our public schools. my kids have a lot of cousins and friends in public school though - so this worked best for us (it's my kiddos preference). hth.

[ABand3]

I stick to a traditional school schedule, September through May; we take a break during the summer from 'lessons' but learning happens all year. My state requires 180 days, and suggests a traditional calendar, but my county's schools are on year round calendars, so really any 180 days would work. I know many hs'ers who school year round with weeks or months off here and there, not always during the summer.

I like switching our routine/rhythm in Sept & may b/c for us our scheduled activitites are very different during the school year versus summer.

[frogguruami]

We school year round. That has more to do with the fact that we take a week off every 5 to 6 weeks. We use this week as a "catch-up" week if we got behind and if we are all caught up we do a lot of field trips and goofing off.

This schedule usually leaves us starting school the first Monday in August and running until mid June or July.

[Cekimon]

thanks mamas for the shared experiences...

i had a feeling it was probably like that but when i mention the possibility of HS'ing to family etc, these are the types of questions I get... much appreciated!

[Lillian J]

Every state is different. You'd need to look at your own state's laws to see what they expect. Some states won't even have a guideline as to number of days: LAWS

It sounds as if you might, quite understandably, think of homeschooling as quite a huge, ongoing, challenging project that involves a lot of formal teaching and studies in a similar format to what goes on in schools. But you would discover that a whole lot gets learned with very little fuss in a home setting. You wouldn't need to be concerned with "breaks" - you could just blend it all in with your normal life rather than thinking of dedicated blocks of time, and just make time for whatever comes along. Helping them learn certain things in the course of many years and facilitating a healthy love of learning for its own sake doesn't require reproducing a school-like schedule of focus.

I always found that summers were best left alone. Children are busy with very important things during that time - playing with one another and enjoying all the same kinds of things we all got to do when we were that age. Time well invested - more important in the long run than a lot of what goes on in the form of studies about things they can quite easily learn about later rather than earlier, and in less time. Those long summers are wonderful times for development of the imagination and all sorts of things. I wince when I hear of that precious time reduced - because it's so valuable and priceless. I often wished we had more time to ourselves during summers for more reading and things we did when the neighbors were in school - but I was wrong. Dead wrong. And that became quite clear once it was all over and my son was clearly well educated and an effective self-motivated learner. Same with friends of his who had lots of free time - some of the ones who had the most leisurely homeschooling lives are the most dedicated and hard working as they've pursued their higher education and career paths.

So my advice to someone looking at getting started is to relax as much as possible and keep focused on the goal of modeling and nurturing the love of learning rather than on a goal of methodically covering certain material at certain times. Lillian