Our school year is from Jan - Oct. We start up right after new years. Take off for Easter. And then continue through Halloween. Then off again for November and December. My kids love fall festivals (In place of Halloween) because they see it as the end of the school year for them. News years, on the other hand means the start of a new year. This way we still get three months off, but we do not have to have the stress of school work during our most important holiday seasons. Plus, we are in SOUTH Texas. And all the social things stop and the heat is horrible, so getting three hours of school work done in the morning, and saving the rest of the day after lunch, to go chase bugs and play on the slip and slide, works just fine for us. So they also do not miss out on regular summer stuff either... (Not chain to a desk! hahahaaha! Are there any other summer schoolers out there? What is your schedule? Reasons?
Wanted to add that.. We also use these primary grades to push forward a bit. Because we do not have to do the review that PS kids have to do after the summer break, we have slowly got the children up to almost a full grade ahead. The purpose for this was because our school schedule is off by about half a year from Public schools, we wanted our kids to be "Ahead" half a year, instead of being "Behind" by half a year. So far it is working wonderfully. The five year old will be allowed to attend public kindergarten this fall, but by jan, when we start our new school year, but she will be ready for first grade work. She will had just turned 6 as well. So at any given time she is one half year ahead of where she would be legally allowed in PS. The twins are the same, half of their school work is 3rd grade, right now. They are technically finishing up second grade as far as PS is concerned.
We will be doing some this summer, ALgerbra1 will continue through the summer untill she finishes, then we will break, so Highschool will continue, Grade school ( ds 10) will be done in a week or so! Life is so fun!
Wish we could have a similar schedule but the good ole laws of VA require Intent filing at a certain time and standardized testing at another time....so if we started our year in Jan, that would totally confuse them and probably cause more trouble with them than its worth:cry: My kids are also a bit too "institutionalized" still for school to not get at least some summer break time :lol: Although they know that we'll be doing some light schooling (mostly math and reading).....and vacation to visit my family and a week long girls scout trip are all during the summer.........but I definitely like your schedule!!
Samantha would kill me if I told her we were going to do school work over summer! Plus we'd never get anything done anyway. Just when we'd get started we'd have to take a break. She goes to summer camps and we do several little vacations plus our one big one. The pool is far too inviting as well! Just wouldn't work for our family. In theory I think it's a great idea just not practical for us.
We work through summer. Our reasons being that in Oz, the school year starts in Jan- Dec. Even though here in Arab Emirates, it follows the northern hemisphere schedule (Sept onwards) As it is soooooooooooo hot over summer, we find it best to just keep schooling the kids. We dont head away like the bulk of the expat population. As it is too hot to do anything but be inside...we thought it best to school work..sitting in the cool. Then when its "winter" here, I give the kids 10-12 weeks off. (Dec, Jan + part Feb) The weather is more suitable for outside play. As we know that we will eventually return back to Oz, its just easier to follow their school timings. Works really well for us. Meant to add...we take off 2 weeks for Easter, 2 weeks in July and 2 weeks in Sept also. (these are the rough school holidays for school in Oz - 4 terms) Its very flexible though. We also travel when we can, so catch up at a later date.
Our "normal" school yr is Aug. to April. Two weeks off the end of Dec. During the summer I have a binder for each child with review work and several different summer reading programs. If they finish they get $10 for their beach spending money - we go to the beach the end of July, so they have May, June and July to get it all done. Each of the reading programs has their own rewards. What I include in their summer work is the remaining pages of a workbook they might not have finished during our normal school yr, some worksheets with some subjects that they might need a little help with, a reading list of books I picked for them to read, I also include some summer fun - like crosswords, hidden pictures, ect.
Crystal, I like your plan! That sounds great! Working over the summer is something we did when the kids were young. Now that they're older it just hasn't worked, and I miss it! But, time marches on, and so must I, I suppose! We do mainly reading books and math stuff over the summer as we can fit it in. DD ASKED to do math over the summer because, "Otherwise I forget too much and have to go back too far!" OK, I will be HAPPY for you to do some math over the summer! We school August through May usually, having a week around Thanksgiving, since we usually go to my parents' place, and 2 weeks around Christmas. We also have a Spring break for a week. Then we take off other days as needed and don't feel too concerned about it.
We do like you do, Jen, for the same reasons. I won't rewrite your post. LOL My kids are also a half year ahead, except ds5 was bound and determined that he can't start school until he turned 5... which he did on Wednesday. We have our company arriving this week and then the weekend out of town, and we'll get started with K for him 3 months ahead of the ps, and likely finish it by income tax return when OUR year flips. I like our year flipping at income tax return, because that allows me to purchase the new year's curriculum. After Halloween, we finish up any books we haven't yet - namely English - and continue reading. We do some lapbooks and SchoolExpress packets, and go off on learning tangents according to the whim and interest of the kids, but nothing formal after Halloween except to finish basics like math or English.
We'll be starting up our new year in January. We live in South Texas and the heat is unbearable. It was too hot to go to our weekly park days with our local homeschool group this week. We'll be homeschooling over the summer concentrating on Reading, Writing, and Math. Jennifer, where in South Texas are you from? We live in San Antonio.
Little sprouts, we are just west of Houston. If you ever find yourself coming this way, pop me a private message and I will give you directions! San Antonio is gorgeous! If I can convince DH to take time off from work I would love to show the kids the Alamo.
When we take off for holiday, after our end of year for november and december. we also don't completely stop... there are no rules, but we eventually end up back at the lapbook table or what not, mostly because my kids are so young, 7 and 5.
Yea, it is pretty boring, in many aspects.. no more Astroworld.. Nasa is relatively (Don't flame me) boring, and the city is so wide spread it takes $100 to go from one end to the other. I much more like it out here in the sticks, jus ton the edge of town.
I like the idea of schooling through the hottest time of the year. However, we're all so accustomed to the traditional school calendar year, I can't see us changing it up. Plus, the boys have so many friends who go to school...it's always hard for them to work when their best friends are out of school. (That's going to be the story for this week, as Friday is our last day but our PS's got out for summer last Friday!) It's beautiful how we can all flex things to work for US!
We sort of school through the summer. I have my own version of year round so that there's no forgetting information, we can take our breaks as we need them or want to, all that good stuff! Plus, I just like to have a short breather in between lots of weeks of keeping on! We're in NC, so also pretty hot summers, but nothing like Texas! (I used to live in Dallas) But still, spring and fall are better times of the year to really have breaks and let the kids be outside since summer's way too hot and winter is a little chilly here. We start the new school year sometime after Labor Day. Only because of my own mind set that that's the time the new grade level should change! I'm starting to get to the point where we'll just move up whenever we are ready to no matter where in the year we may be. Especially since Rachel is on different grade levels for different subjects. We'll move onto the new grade level for each subject independent of the others whenever in the year she's ready for it. Most of her stuff is almost a full grade level ahead anyway. Her peers are going from K to 1 in PS soon, she'll be in 2nd grade for most of her stuff by the fall. I guess after Labor Day really is more like a starting point for me to start counting out 180 days for a "year" of studying more so than for the official start of a new grade. From there, we'll take a week or two off in the fall. I give a week in October, and the week around Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving, we school until we've done one full week in December. We take the rest of December off (b/c I don't want the stress during Christmas!) and go back to work after the New Year. I give a spring break around Easter, and we do whatever holidays Daddy gets off work. (Like today, Memorial Day.) Those are standard, and then we'll also take off other time that varies from year to year depending on when we want to do our family vacation that year. So, counting from after Labor Day, and considering our days off that PS kids don't usually get, we get to our 180th day by the end of July or early August or so. Then, take a little break with whatever time is left in the summer until whenever we start in Sept. So, we sort of school in the summer and sort of get some time off then too. How much time depends on how many days we got in from fall to spring! At least that's the way we do things now. . . .it could always change if I see need or think something else may work better for our family in the future! I also like her finishing a subject and going onto the next grade level in it independently of others, cause then I order JUST that subject at that time, and not have to order the whole next grade level of ALL subjects all at once.
We were going to do "light" school EVERYDAY during the summer. The kids were moaning and groaning about it so I worked out a plan with the kids that makes us all happy. Monday,Wednesday,and Friday will be our school days. We will only be doing Math,spelling,and reading. They are technically off for summer break right now. They will get started with the summer schooling June 16th. Our schedule: June16-27 **school June 30-July 11~~ OFF~~ July 14-25 **school July 28-Aug. 8th~~OFF~~ August 11-22 **school Aug 25-Sept 1 ~~OFF~~ REG School year starts September 2nd I don't want a BIG LONG break for them so I'm hoping this will work out ok. My husband says that they should have the summer off but I don't see what a few hours a couple days a week is going to hurt. They will also be doing the summer reading program at the Library. So that will help them with an incentive for reading. They give some GREAT prizes. I'm going to use Crystal's idea with the $$. It's a great motivator.
We do summer school as well. We just started 3 weeks ago, and we'll go through about mid to late February. This way we start school just as the weather is getting hot, and we'll finish up just as the weather is getting nice enough to enjoy. Since summer in AZ is unbearable, and "Spring" is just beautiful with 70-80 degree temps and sunny.
