Are any of you homeschooling year round using one of the options listed in the WTM?

[hsing1]

Hi,
I'm new to the group. I am currently hsing my 7yo first grade soon. We will be starting 2nd in June using a more classical approach. I'm currently reading the WTM...do any of you go year round? How did it work for you?

Thanks!:)

[pixelroper]

do a search- for 'year around schooling' in the forums, I've posted on it before as well as many others, if you can't find anything let me know.

[Adrianne]

We take off one week per month or when it suits us. I try to complete curriculum in a year but that does not always happen. We just keep working until the book is done (within reason) or I feel they have gotten enough out of it to start the new book.

Schooling all year also helps to relieve any pressure that I might feel to "get done school" by a certain time. I feel it gives us more time to relax and enjoy the lessons, have game day, reading day, or just days off when it is nice.

Of course I have to say that I am very relaxed about schooling and have let go of my expectations about their learning. This too has also allowed us to a more relaxed and pleasant homeschooling time.

I highly recommend it!

Good luck in your new homeschooling adventure!

[Karen in CO]

I loosely follow the local school calendar because my ds has lots of ps friends. I start our "new year" around the same time ps does, and that is when I start referring to them as being in the next grade. We do a full schedule for 36 weeks taking breaks when we need. After 36 weeks, I quit counting officially until the next school year. We do math, reading (in a variety of topics) and handwriting (for the middle one) year round at least 3 days a week unless we are out of town or have company. This summer we are going to start our medieval history in the summer to take advantage of the local Ren. Fest. Some years we have also done science in the summers. This way I know we are meeting our requirements, but I don't stress about the schedule. We also make continual progress in the core subjects.

[Cornerstone Classical]

This is our 1st year hsing and I plan to continue through the summer as well. We'll be finishing up SOTW1 due to it having 42 chapters. I plan on continuing Math so that we don't have to spend the first several weeks of our new school year reviewing what we would have forgotten over a summer break. I usually plan on a week off quarterly for deep cleaning my home. And I plan to take off quite a bit for the month of May. It's beautiful weather here then. Starting in July when it gets too hot and the humidity rises my kids want to stay in alot so instead of them doing useless things I plan to "officially" start the next school year the Monday after July 4.

I don't strictly follow one of the year around schedules in the WTM but something like it. I know we already school more than 36 weeks a year so I just take off when I feel we need some time. KWIM?

Welcome to the WTM forum! You will enjoy it I know. There are a lot of wonderful people on this forum who I have learned alot from! :001_smile:

[Cadam]

We school year-round. We keep up with the basics (Latin, math, Phonics, writing) in the summer and during the school year we do everything else and take a week off when needed (about every 7th week it seems)

[Carol in Cal.]

I feel like a real slacker mom when I hear yall talking so much about schedules, especially schedules that go out 5 years and such.

Here is what I do.

We always do skills stuff--grammar, writing, spelling, math, literature of some sort. Grammar is Rod and Staff. So we do that 5-6 days most weeks. Spelling is Phonetic Zoo. So Dd does that on any day where she has the computer available to her. Writing is RS, or Writing Strands, or a separate assignment, or free writing (not usually a free write. Stream of consciousness writing is not really all that effective with DD.) We do that on days when Dd does not have a major outside activity, and on some days when she does. Math is Saxon. We do 1-2 lessons per day midweek, and 2 on weekends.

Really, at 11 1/2 that doesn't take that long, and DD is old enough that, although mornings are still best, afternoons and evenings are at least POSSIBLE. When I want her to have a partial break, sometimes I let her do Editor in Chief rather than Rod and Staff. When we are not near the computer for some reason, sometimes she skips spelling.

We add in vocabulary from read alouds and vocabulary vine and science reading (I have a terrible tendency to point out word families in science and get all excited about them. Out loud. Rubidium and rubies being a recent example.) DD does a variety of science stuff, and we discuss it. She attends a junior great books and art coop. We have organized a book group that studies and discusses longer, more difficult works. She is in a choral group. We read literature together and separately and discuss it. We discuss figures of speech, loosely using Figuratively Speaking orally for that. We read history together and separately and discuss it--we use SOTW and lots of other books. DD is currently attending a social studies coop one day per week that includes some history and some art--really, there is not much content but it is fun and she does learn there. On those days she only does one math lesson, one grammar lesson, and maybe her spelling.

We do Mind Benders sometimes for logic, and I write out easy almost algebra problems--systems of 2 or 3 equations. She really does not know how to do those, but I work them in front of her and she puts in comments here and there. Same with diagramming sentences--every so often I make up a few and we do them together. These are usually on days when she doesn't have the coops or chorus.

So in the winter when it is Christmas time, most days she still does math and grammar. And it's the same when she has summer camps, except for her one sleepover camp per year.

Every so often I tell her that she has the day off completely. Often on that day she will have company or visit someone at their home or have a monster field trip of some sort. She loves that. But I don't schedule entire weeks off. She understands that she does not have to do as much as a lot of school kids, and that she has more free time than they do because we homeschool. I keep reminding her of that. She also knows that I let up on her if she is very tired or has a playdate, precisely because she works hard rest of the time.

The only people she is jealous of is her unschooling friends. But she is just not a kid who will unschool herself, so there you have it.

I get through at least one year of math per year. DD hates math, so despite this we are behind (I pushed her though Harcourt for several years, realized that retention wasn't there, and had to bite the bullet and accept a poor result on a Saxon placement test as accurate--it was very hard.) We get through a little more than one year of grammar per year. We get through a lot of history, but not enough science--I have been correcting that during the last few months, and DD usually attends one or two science camps each summer as well. I wish that we had actually done Latin this year as intended, but we did not. I don't think that she would like Logic and I'm not interested in fighting that battle--she has to memorize so many other terms for things in science, literature, etc. that I think Fallacy Detective would be overwhelming. But we do use logical patterns, and we will see when to add in FD.

But I get this done without really scheduling it that precisely. I don't want to be bound to that tough of a schedule, and I think that continuous learning works best for this child. I want to be able to pull ahead and take little breaks. I want her to be able to concentrate almost completely on a unit study or report for periods of time now and then. To me that freedom is one of the great things about homeschooling. I am fiercely determined not to give it up!

[Closeacademy]

I school year round to keep everything fresh so we don't have to waste weeks reviewing in the fall.

I actually schedule our workload into monthly units and we do schoolwork 4 days a week. I do short intense lessons so school doesn't take all day. Every 3 to 6 weeks we break things up with a fun week where we drop all the schoolwork and play games and do lapbooks and stuff on a fun seasonal topic or whatever we are interested in.

It really works well for us and I have been doing it for several years now.:)

[Donna]

We do school 4 days a week during the "school year," keeping Fridays for catching up on things that didn't get finished, cleaning house, or "field trips," etc...

From mid-June until Sept, we school "officially" 3 days a week and only do the basics like math, writing, reading, Spanish, and any history or science that we didn't finish up the previous year. Often, if I have a special topic they want to cover, like one year star gazing and this year Indian tribes, we will do that in the summer as well which often gives us things to do on those "days off" that are fun and not so school-like.

During the year we take a week break around Christmas and at other times of the year when we need it for sanity, spring cleaning, etc... or we will just take a day or two here and there. In the summer we generally take a vacation and depending on where, we take school work or don't. This year it is a month long road trip west and we will be taking along a few things for the riding days to keep us busy.

[Christine]

We school year round.

I used to take a month off in summer, but no longer because the kids said it drove them nuts. (They would get "bored".)

I do now seriously cut back to 2-3 subjects in the summer, just because we are so busy then.

We take breaks in the "school year" to suit us. I try to take them off of the school's breaks as we tend to travel, and it's much easier / cheaper when you aren't fighting everyone else who's on break.