Have you asked yourself that question? It does not matter if you are in public school, private or homeschooling this can be a common question of any parent. When your children are out of school for a for an extended period of time, they seem to loose all that they learned the year before. Okay that is how it seems in my world.
This is one reason we usually school year round. Schooling year round helps my kids to not forget everything that they learn if they take a few days off here and there.
What does it mean to school year round you might ask? To school year round means you don't take the traditional school schedule. Starting in August/September, take a week off at Thanksgiving, 2 weeks off at Christmas time, 1 week during the spring then 2/3 months during the Summer. (There is also the traditional 6 weeks of in house or online summer school programs some children end up taking.) I have seen a few different ways people do a year round schedule. Here are a few different schedules that I have seen.
- 6 weeks on 2 weeks off
- 9 weeks on 3 weeks off
- Jan to July off in July, then August to the Nov 15th and off till Jan. (give or take a few days)
- Take time off when needed for sickness or wanted for family vacation/holidays. Being sure to get all 180 days of schooling in during a given school year.
#4 is what we usually go by in our home. We have had this philosophy our whole homeschool career. This came about when my oldest was in Kindergarden and took his final evaluation for the school year and declared that after his birthday in June he was going to start his first grade curriculum. I jumped on his new happy school attitude and we have kept the same year round schedule since.
Lil Momma Strouse
4th option for us as well. According to my declaration of intent, we homeschool from 9/1-8/31 each year. Like you, we take time off when we need (and want, lol) to. Usually we end up getting our 180 days in by the time July comes to an end, and have the month of August off. :)
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