It's about that time of year for homeschool moms when our thoughts turn toward the next school year. Each year I get later and later in the time I start making my list. I seem to always research items as I come across them. Using Pinterest makes this a little easier. I seem to save books to my Amazon wishlist throughout the year too. I haven't gone beyond these means yet in my planning for the upcoming year.
One thing that I have been rolling around in my head and pondering is a year around school schedule. We have been using a modified version of this for a few years now. This really has more benefits to us and it's something we want to continue to use. Although, we make adjustments every year as we haven't found the perfect school schedule or at least one that works from one year to the next.
What is going to work for us in the 2014-2015 school year? That is my biggest dilemma in my planning at the moment. Our biggest (and I think only) obstacle to schooling in the summer is the fact that the boy's friends have the traditional three months off. It's hard to do school when you know your friends are at the pool or playing video games. I do know that we started back to school towards the end of July last year and that was too early. We had to take an unplanned week off in August to have some end of summer fun and a last chance to meet up with friends before they started back to school. Which was completely fine and turned out to be a wonderful last minute decision.
I also know that we have to be done with the school year mid-May. We've tried many times to make it through May and it's an impossible task. I won't try it again . . . I know our limits.
Right now I'm looking at being done with our fourth term on May 16th and being off the rest of the month of May. I plan to start our summer term on June 2 and do three weeks of school. Half days is all I see us doing. The last week of June is already scheduled so we will have that week off and all of July off. I see us starting the new school year on August 4th. This gives us a total of 8 weeks off during the summer. Another idea that is floating around is doing some school in July and taking a couple of weeks off in August.
I really want to see what other homeschools are doing in this area. Please share with me. I would love to have a big discussion about this topic! What works for you, what doesn't, any ideas you want to try out?
Here in Australia we have 4 terms a year, 12 weeks off. Our school year begins in the last days of January, term for 10 weeks and then 2 weeks off which autumn Mostly this falls around Easter but not always. (we always have several days off around Easter, in Australia Good Friday is a public holiday and Easter Monday) Then back to school and our next break is early July, July here is winter. two weeks off and then 10 week term until mid September which is spring. we then work through till just a week before Christmas and then 6 weeks off.
ReplyDeleteI wish the US had a school schedule like this. It seems like the most reasonable use of time.
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