This decision has been coming for several weeks. I’ve tossed it back and forth but the last few disorderly weeks have shown me that I need to switch to homeschooling year-round.
Now, before you think I have lost my marbles, let me tell you that I lost those a long time ago. Seriously, ask yourself, “How much time do I spend educating my child?” If you are like us, your home is an educational environment and learning is happening whether formally or not almost all the time. Honestly, I get exhausted after about six weeks.
Then, when you consider that I am not planning lessons for a solid year and need to plan every few weeks plus I am somewhat lazy, it just seems logical to school for four weeks and then take one week off. There has only been one thing holding me back.
This blog.
I blog what we are doing each week. If we are taking a break, what in the world am I going to write about?
Today, the solution came to me.
One the weeks we are on break, I will be sharing product or book reviews, ways to play, art projects and more. Seriously, I have so much rattling around in my brain that I want to share but I just don’t have the time to blog it all. This will give me the perfect opportunity.
To help you know where we are in our year, I am going to add a calendar to the sidebar so you can see how I am dividing things up.
I am really excited about this change for our family and for the blog. I hope you will enjoy it too.
I’ve just realized we need to school year-round as well. Its been waaaayyy too difficult to get my kids back onto “school” schedule this fall. They still want to go and play outside all day. Thank goodness the weather is finally turning fallish so that will deter them some. But I haven’t been able to do many of what I would consider “full” school days due to restless bodies who need to go out and run. I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to do the four week on one week off schedule as well. What can I say, great minds think alike 😀
That is part of our problem here too, Amy. I would almost rather school every day of the year for just a few hours than fight them. As you make the transition, I would love to know how it works for you.
We typically school year round ourselves. However, this summer we experienced 4 deaths. This season of trial pretty much blew our typical homeschooling schedule out the realm of possibility for us. There were lessons learned and much personal growth but in a different way. My youngest shared that he wished we could have schooled all through the summer, because he forgets stuff and has to review now. Learning is such a natural part of our lives that we feel “off” somehow if we are not doing what we do…
Dana ~ I am so sorry for your losses. That must have been very difficult.
I think your youngest has an excellent point. The first several weeks seems to be spent in review when we use the traditional model. Schooling year round keeps us moving onward and also keeps the children from being bored.
I hope you will be able to get back into your groove soon. 🙂
We homeschool year round. It just seems to work better for us. Its better for my boys to be in the house in the heat of summer or cold of winter. Plus we don’t have to stop. We just keep going. We don’t have a long 2 or 3 month break in between and the kids off routine. We usually do 3 weeks of lessons and 1 week off. This month we have an extra week, and in December we take 3 weeks off. I do a lot of baking and the kids make a lot of hand made crafts for family.
We thought about the three weeks on and one week off but it didn’t work with us wanting to be off with Bill for about six weeks in the summer. I certainly agree with you about the extreme weather! This is the time of year when my children want to be outside and come March it will be similar. I love them being outside as much as possible! LOL
I can’t wait to see how this goes. We keep talking about it. This year we started to late since we have a possible portfolio review in June. I never understand why schools take off the summer where the kids loose so much information and then take a bunch of snow-days in the winter. I just don’t know if we can pull it off with camp and activities structured to a normal school year. I am determined to try it out next year.
Rebecca ~ I would consider camp as part of your school year. For instance, we will participate in Vacation Bible School for a week. Since Bible is a part of our curriculum and VBS takes 4 hours each day that week, I will consider that a school week. You could always consider it a part of your PE too.
I think the idea of year-round homeschooling is great! I am having to re-vamp our daily school tasks right now anyways. We are visiting family out of state for a few months and my girls could care less if they did school work. We are taking this months for science experiments and other fun craft projects.
Schooling never really stops anyway, right? Even on the weeks we take off, there is something going on that is learning oriented. Have fun and enjoy your unstructured learning this month!
We also homeschool year round as I work 12hr day/night shfits and living in AZ the summer months are just way to hot to be outside, so why not just dig in during the hottest months and slack of a little when its cooler, and with my work schedule it is a much better option since the basic schedule does not change!
That makes perfect sense to me. I have to say though… you are a better woman that me to work those shifts and still homeschool. Super Woman Alert! 🙂