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Since it is that time of year where we are all in the thick of homeschool planning, I am kicking of a series of Homeschool Planning posts. Today we’ll focus on the different types of yearly schedules. We’ll cover ideas for the many ways to schedule your required amount of days for the whole year. I am not focusing on daily schedules and routines in this post. That will be later in this series.
Before you start planning your homeschool year, check your state’s homeschool laws to make sure you stay in legal compliance and school for the required number of days. If you are ever unsure about the requirements for your state, HSLDA is a great place to go for that kind of information. Don’t be intimidated by the amount of days or hours required by your state. Keep in mind, school doesn’t always mean book work.
Yearly Schedules
There are several ways to plan your yearly schedule. As long as you make sure to get in your required amount of days, you can schedule your year however you want. Welcome to the flexibility of homeschooling. Here are some of the most popular types of yearly schedules I’ve seen. You can adapt and customize any of these schedules to fit your homeschool style.
Traditional Schedule
This is just like it sounds. You follow a traditional public school schedule. You start your year in August or September, and you school until May or June. School is five days a week with scheduled breaks for major and a few minor holidays. Breaks may include fall break, Christmas break, spring break with a long break for summer. You can even schedule in teacher work days to give yourself breaks throughout the year.
This schedule works well for families that have kids in both public and home schools that want to keep all of their kids on the same schedule. It also works well for people who don’t like to plan and want to just grab a pre-made schedule and follow it. If you want to follow your district calendar, you can usually find it published on their website then you can follow it for the year. This type of schedule is predictable and easy to plan. If you are the type of person that gets easily distracted, and taking a day off turns into a week because it’s hard for you to get back on track, traditional is a great way to go.
Year Round Schedule
The year round schedule is the most flexible of all the options. Since you school whenever you are home, you can plan vacations and take days off whenever you want. Year round homeschooling means that school is just part of life and there is no expectation of certain scheduled break times. You take breaks whenever you want (within reason). Just pick up wherever you left off after a break. Kids progress to the next grade level whenever they finish the previous year’s books, and not by a certain deadline. There is no last day of school for the year as they just keep going.
The year round schedule is great for people who want flexibility. You can take spontaneous vacations and if things like family emergencies come up, you can take the time off you need without worrying about messing up your schedule. This is also great for kids who don’t do well transitioning from school routine, to summer break, back to school again. It’s a great way to give kids a predictable daily routine and avoid the forgotten skills that come with a long summer break (the summer slide).
Sabbath Schedule
The Sabbath schedule is usually a year-round schedule that follows a pattern of six weeks on, one week off. You can also do six weeks of bookwork, then one week of field trips and fun learning. This type of homeschool schedule is great for people that want the consistency of year-round schooling, but with predictable, scheduled breaks. Most people try to plan their vacations around their Sabbath week, but there is still some flexibility as you can move your breaks around if needed.
Winter Break Schedule
This schedule is basically a traditional school year schedule, but with a long break in winter instead of summer. Basically the school year is opposite of the public school year. Many families that live in the deep south of the US adopt this type of schedule. When summer is too hot and humid to get outside and you’re cooped up in the house anyway, you might as well do school. In the winter the weather is more pleasant so you can take time off when you can actually enjoy leaving the house.
4 Day Week
The four day week is very popular among homeschoolers. Most people that use this schedule do school Monday-Thursday with Friday as their day off, while others take a different day off to coincide with work schedules or other activities. Another way to adapt this schedule is making Monday-Thursday your main school days then using Friday as a flex day to finish anything that didn’t get done earlier in the week, or it can be a field trip day.
What My Yearly Schedule Looks Like
I do a combination of a year round schedule, winter break schedule, and four day week. We don’t schedule our breaks in advance so we can be flexible with my husband’s work and travel schedule. By schooling all year, I really don’t have to worry about a spontaneous family adventure making us unable to get in our required amount of school days. We usually end up doing more than our required number of days per year. Christmas break is our long break, as I usually need a break at that point to enjoy the holidays. Our long break ends up being shorter than the public schools’ summer break. As for the four day week, we do full school days Monday-Thursday, and only math and fun learning on Fridays. This also allows us to play catch up on Fridays as needed.
I don’t plan our year in advance. One year I spent about forty hours in a week planning and making our schedule organized and perfect. That lasted until one of the kids got sick and threw off my perfect plan. Now there is a calendar like this one in my school room and I keep track of our attendance, field trips, and outside classes as we go. This is the easiest way for me to keep records of what we do throughout the year.
I hope this gives you some good ideas as you plan your homeschool year. Stay tuned for more posts in the Homeschool Planning series.