How do you schedule your year??

[momof3kids]

Hi ladies!
So glad to say i just purchased Beyond for my oldest son to start our first yr hs!!....i feel so good about using HOD!..a real peace and excitement looking forward to our first yr!...I feel God has lead our family to this decision, and after talking with Julie and Carrie at our convention, i know we have made the right decision!....so now, the question is..how do some of you plan out your year??...i see alot of daily schedyles, but i am trying to figure out what overall plan might work for us...
like doing 4 weeks on/ 1 week off....kind of year round...with extra weeks off as wanted (like Dec, or spring time..)
or do you follow a typical "school" calender...
10 weeks on/ 2 weeks off...with weeks left over to schedule off when needed...
do you do 4 or 5 days a week??
i know doing 4 days a week adds to your yr/ carries over to the next...does that work well??

i am interested in any and all suggestions from you wise women!...just a note...my ds will finish K ps in June...but after showing them what we got for their school, they are wanting to start now....how would starting in July be??

my dh works for the state and has days off during the week every other week, so i don't mind the idea of having "extra days" to take off as you want..so we could just take off when he is....

i will also be continuing LHTH with my younger ds as well...but would love to hear what has worked/ or not worked for all of you!!

[MomtoJGJE]

Our "year" runs from July 1 to June 30. But we just do school when we do it and don't when we don't. I do not have any set amount of days per week or weeks per year. We end up getting roughly 190-200 days of school each year. When someone finishes a guide we move up to the next guide. Whenever that may be.

[StephanieU]

We are doing year round, with 4-5 days a week August-April and then 2-3 days a week (or one subject a day every day) the rest of the year. Our state requires 180 days of instruction but nothing else. I know we will end up with more than that, and I am perfectly fine. If our kids are done with K-12 education by 16 or 17, then we will just enroll them in more courses at the community college.

We take Fridays off when my husband has off (should be every other week but is often only once a month). We don't do school when we are on vacation except in the car. When family visits, we treat it like "summer" and do at most one subject a day.

[glperky]

We are doing year round, with 4-5 days a week August-April and then 2-3 days a week (or one subject a day every day) the rest of the year. Our state requires 180 days of instruction but nothing else. I know we will end up with more than that, and I am perfectly fine. If our kids are done with K-12 education by 16 or 17, then we will just enroll them in more courses at the community college.

We take Fridays off when my husband has off (should be every other week but is often only once a month). We don't do school when we are on vacation except in the car. When family visits, we treat it like "summer" and do at most one subject a day.

Stephanie, when you do school April-August, just 2-3 days a week, are you using a HOD guide at that time? Or do you only do the HOD guide Aug.-April?

[mom23]

We've homeschooled for 3 years, and have always run our school year from July through June, year round. The first year I scheduled about 3 weeks on, one off; wrote it all out on a calendar and counted out that we had the required number of days in...I think we had an extra week to take off 2 at Christmas, and maybe an extra week around a "Spring Break" also. I found that frustrating because we weren't able to stick to it-we had company coming in the weeks we were supposed to do school, which shouldn't be a big deal to adjust the schedule for, but it seemed like those ended up right after our break times, so we had extened "times off" (which weren't really times off when you're preparing for company ) and then coming right off that to do school for twice as long, because you couldn't take your next break since you'd just had extra time. Now that we're living closer to some of our family, I think they'll be planning weekend visits occasionally, rather than coming to stay for a week or two...it may work better for us now .

The next year I didn't try to plan anything out ahead of time. We did school when we could, (5 days per week) and when we felt like we needed a break we took it. We also took about a month off in the summer time. That worked really well for us. The third year, I again didn't plan out our days, but because of my husband's work schedule we ended up doing a lot of 4 day school weeks and found it harder to get enough school days in if we took off too many week-long vacations. Our break times ended up being taken a day at a time mostly, and then longer when we had company coming or had to travel (we just moved 12 hrs. north of where we lived before, and had lots of travel needed for setting up a job and finding housing, etc.) Now that we've just come off that year, we're all feeling the need for an extended "Summer Break", so we're planning to take off the months of June and July.

My favorite way was doing school 5 days a week, and just taking breaks when we needed it. Most of my friends school with the traditional school year-Sept (or late Aug) through May-and say they really like that summer vacation.

[TrueGRIT]

Congratulations on finding a guide for your son, and how exciting that he is so eager to start!

We have tried our yearly schedule several different ways. I am one to stop and evaluate from Mid February- April what we need for the coming 'school year,' then make my plans accordingly. Most years I start our school year in August, however last year my second child was so eager to start school he continued to pester me until I started him in late July. I waited to start my older one until 2 weeks later. That worked great!

We do school 4 days a week, and take breaks when we need them. In Spring I plan week long breaks, then mark a day off that plan if we need to use it before then due to unexpected circumstances. I give at least a 2 day break at the end of every single month.
Our state doesn't have minimum requirements for home schoolers*, but I try to use the basic plan of at least 180 days during my 12 month time period. If we have to take a day off and do anything educational during that time I mark it as a field trip. (*although they are trying to change that. )

You've gotten some great posts - hope this gives you ideas!

[julsoliveira]

Our "year" runs from July 1 to June 30. But we just do school when we do it and don't when we don't. I do not have any set amount of days per week or weeks per year. We end up getting roughly 190-200 days of school each year. When someone finishes a guide we move up to the next guide. Whenever that may be.

Yup. This is how we do it too. We don't school when My husband is home on leave, if someone has a birthday during the work week, or during state testing week (since that takes about 3 hours per day for 3-4 days for my older one) . If we don't have all of our resources to "start the year" we just do math and reading, and maybe watch a documentary on netflix. We school over winter break, but take off Christmas eve, Day, and the day after.

I just know for our family, that the kids do better with a routine. If they have more than a week off, they start to get squirrely, or instigate each other.

[MelInKansas]

I always do some school in July. It's just too hot to enjoy being outdoors and if we've been taking a break we're tired of the break by then. Last year, and this year, we've schooled through most of the summer, taking breaks as appropriate. We are also part of a co op during the school year so that effectively takes out one of our school days during the week, so to get the 180 days of the guide done we have to do some in the summer too. If we can get 7 more units done by the beginning of August then we will have done a whole guide in about a year's time.

[StillJulie]

I print off a calendar year from DonnaYoung's printables. I use a highlighter to highlight the weeks that I know we'll do school. One of my non-negotiables is that we finish before Memorial Day.

We also take a week off from HOD for our county fair mid-September... two weeks around Christmas... maybe one week around Easter...

I figure out when we need to start to accomodate the weeks that I want off.

Next year we'll start August 19th (provided I have all my materials in time).

We'll get three full weeks in before our fair. We'll continue with full weeks (I like to keep Day 1 on Monday, Day 2 on Tuesday, and so on) through November 22nd.

I think I'm going to let us get "off" on the weekly schedule for a little while between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We'll do 2 days of school (Nov. 25 & 26) Thanksgiving week. We'll do the "other" 2 days on December 16 and 17th before taking off for Christmas break.

We may wait til January 6th to start back (unless it just seems too long). We'll do full HOD weeks until the week before Easter. We'll take off April 14th -18th. Our last day will be May 23rd.


That's my tentative plan anyhow. We're a farming family so I always have to be flexible since DH may decide he needs some of the older kids to help with something, particularly in the fall and spring.

On some of the weeks that we don't do HOD, we will likely still do reading, math, and maybe a few fun extras. This is what we did this past school year, and it worked very well for us.

[StephanieU]

We are doing year round, with 4-5 days a week August-April and then 2-3 days a week (or one subject a day every day) the rest of the year. Our state requires 180 days of instruction but nothing else. I know we will end up with more than that, and I am perfectly fine. If our kids are done with K-12 education by 16 or 17, then we will just enroll them in more courses at the community college.

We take Fridays off when my husband has off (should be every other week but is often only once a month). We don't do school when we are on vacation except in the car. When family visits, we treat it like "summer" and do at most one subject a day.

Stephanie, when you do school April-August, just 2-3 days a week, are you using a HOD guide at that time? Or do you only do the HOD guide Aug.-April?

We are just going to start HOD in the fall. But, I envision doing it 3-4 days a week with my 5yo (either LHFHG or Beyond) and 2-3 days a week with my younger to in LHLH August-April and half pace (2-3 lessons a week) for all of them in the summer when we aren't traveling etc. Theoretically they will end up 1-2 grades ahead by the time they finish K-12 which will allow them to take more classes at the community college before going off to collect (and yet still being home where we can help guide them through the "worldly" portions of most schools).