Hello everyone. I was just curious how many of you do a 4 day schedule and how many do a 5 day schedule. For the 1/2 of kindergarten that we did hs we did a 4 day schedule and used our fridays for extra p.e. errands, etc. Then last year we were so far behind in work and struggling that we did a 5 day schedule. But it seemed like we never had much time for errands and was always rushed and overloaded. This year I am still debating what to do. I am even contemplating going for a 4 day schedule and using the 5th as a day for extra curriculars and maybe the group (if we start one or join one) and then errands. I'm trying this out today. We'll probably tackle art and music as well as a bit of choral reading and of course p.e. With our schedule during the week we are avg. 5 hours (with 1 hour p.e.) and didn't get around to either art or music. I counted art as time lapbooking on our science but I'd rather have an actual art class separate. I did have it scheduled m-art/crafts tu-art appreciation wed-music app. and thurs-music fun. But I'm not even getting to this so far! So maybe on fridays do an all of these in a 2 hour long block or so? What do you do, what works and if you use a 4 day schedule instead, why do you think it works? Thanks!
ooh, and I just had an idea by reading another thread of including timeline work on fridays? Maybe....I dont know.
we have always done 5 days up to this year, at the school my ds 17 is going to has a deal with students, they get fridays off IF they complete thier work by thursday. He will only have 4 classes to start out so it will be easy for him! I will probably ask the teacher to give him extra work if he finishes too early. ANyway, this made me realize that dd who does same sos lesson work will want the same deal, so I said yes when she asked! so that makes me look at my th grader and say... hmm okay if he does his work by thurday 3pm, he can take friday off too! Otherwise how will one student work while the teens run around? Lol!
I school all year round, so I take days off here and there when I want/need to for outings or errands. If you think about it, kids who go to school basically end up with 4 1/2 months off [3 months of summer, 1 week fall break, 1 week spring break, 2 weeks Christmas break, and then the myriad of days here and there for in-service or federal holidays]. So, if you're trying to stay somehow in sync with the same number of days as your child would get in school, remember that you have those 4 1/2 months of time to play with---unless you live in a state that makes you do school within some set time limit and won't allow you to do it year-round.
We have done 4 days in the past. I think this year my 7th grader will need to do 5 days to keep to our schedule. I don't schedule for my kindergarten age kid. We just do phonics and math whenever. Sometimes even Sunday night. We haven't even officially began our year and she is half way through her math book. It's odd that I have to work this way - one child schools year round and one goes Sept - May.
We did school work whenever last year (K), since I didn't have a plan at all. And he's still ahead This year we will do 4 1/2 days. We have 4 hours worth of classes at the Academy every Monday afternoon, so Monday will be a light day with almost nothing scheduled.
I tried to schedule to get most things done Mon-Thur. We are doing art and a spelling test on Friday. This is to make sure we get in our 180 days. But there are some projects we will be doing through the year that will require an extra day or two (Sat). Most of those things are basically recording observations from an experiement or two. We will see how it works out. It makes quite alot of work for one day when you shorten the week like this. We may end up adjusting later in the year if it becomes too stressful to do that much work in just 4 days.
We tried 4 days a few times, but we never could fit it in. I think partly that's b/c between them my kids have extra curric stuff every afternoon - gymnastics or music groups they participate in. So we have to be finished with school and out the door by 3.30-4pm every day. I find that we can do the academics 5 days a week comfortably, and after lunch each day we do more something the kids consider fun - like art, music, sport, computer studies, scince lab....
We do 4 days during the co-op session and then 5 when we do not have co-op. Next year for dd I think I am going to get the 4 day Sonlight curriculum and use no co-op days for catch up work, extra art, music or field trips.
We have always done 4 days. I work at the church one day a week in the mornings and then we take the rest of the day for library trips, Book It trips, grandma day, etc. I can say doing 4 days that we did over 1 1/2 years of curriculum plus about 10 lapbooks! We also took a ton of time off in December and April. Our 4 days are jam packed, but it works for us. I have tried 5 days and it is overwhelming.
Do any of you think that a 4 day schedule would mess up Saxon math?? I am just wondering if I should at least include it in our friday plan. So far I'm leaning more towards a very relaxed friday with art and music. Didn't go well today because we had so much going on here but next week I'll give it another go. I just don't want to have them come up short on their math work. Thanks!
hmm, you reminded me I work at the church one day a week too, we decided to make that our out of the house school day.. we are trying to figure how to make dds sos get on the lap top so she can work on it down there, otherwise she will print that days work...
We did 4 days last year (including Saxon Math, which worked fine). This year we're going to do 5 days, with the understanding that if we go out to lunch after Bible study on Tuesdays, we won't do homeschool that day. I guess that counts as a field trip. LOL Here's our (tentative) schedule: Bible - M, T, W, Th, F Math - M, T, W, Th, F Spelling - M, T, W, Th Language Arts - M, W, Th, F Writing projects - T, F Reading - M, T, W, Th, F Geography - M, W, F Social studies - Th Science - M, W, Th, F Spanish - W, Th Art - M, Sat Music - Sun (Children's Choir)
We are going to try a 4-day schedule for my kiddos. We won't schedule any school work for Mondays, when our day is mostly taken up by cub scouts. (Dh and I are the den leaders.) If there is any work not completed through the week, it will be done on Saturday (not a big issue for my kids, who've always school Tues-Sat because of dh's nights off). If I find that we are doing make-up work EVERY Saturday, I will re-work the schedule so that we have shorter days, 5 days per week instead of 4. Here's how my 9yo 4th grader's schedule looks: Every day - Grammar Handwriting/copywork Reading (historical fiction and monthly novel, an hour's total each day) History Vocabulary (1day outlining) Math Bible 2 days/Wk, in pairs- Logic - Typing Art (1drawing, 1apprec) - Music (1instr, 1fun) Science - Health (1day), Co-op (1day) Latin - Sign Language He's scheduled for 4 1/2 hours of work, plus an hour of reading each day. (If that seems like a lot, remember that he has a whole extra day off!! LOL) For my K-ers: Every day - Reading Literacy and supplements math 2 days/wk in pairs - Fine motor - Large motor Art - Music Science - Dramatic Play (cooking, fingerplays, felt board, story acting, etc) I expect their activities to only take about 2 hrs each day. Maybe a little more when you add in reading to them.
We have not quite gotten down to 4 days, especially with the HS workload. We do however, only have 3 hours of work on Fridays and its all the 'fun' stuff. Art, Piano, PE. If they don't get all the rest of the main work done M-TH, they have to catch up on Saturdays. Its more of an incentive to get it done because I don't want them to be messing with our relaxed Fridays time.
Well, you could call ours 4 or 5 days... On Mondays, Zach has a LEGO robotics league meeting, then both boys attend our art/PE/music group. So while that amounts to a full afternoon of learning, we don't really hit the books. So that leaves me 4 days to do all the bookwork. So far, it's manageable. I try to keep the load lightest on Fridays. But yeah, to fit everything in, we really work hard on T, W, and Th. The hardest thing I'm dealing with this year is that my science curriculum is written for three days and I'm condensing it into two. We do two days of science and two days of history/geography/social studies. I'm setting it up so that we do our science experiments on Fridays, which goes with the lighter/fun theme of the day.
We did a 4 day school week last school year. Our Wednedays we devoted to park/co-op days with our local homeschooling group. This year we are trying a 5 day week and I hope it will work out. We still will continue our Wednesdays with our homeschool group (but not every week.) We are doing Reading, Phonics, Math and Language Arts every Monday to Friday. Art and Science are three times a week. Social Studies and Health are twice a week. We have not started History yet. I have not gotten the book.
I schedule what needs to be done for the week. If it takes 3 days that's great - 4 days - fine 5 days - well it needs to be done before we go to park day on friday which starts around 11am. On top of the things I plan for them - they have their religion class at church (Monday evenings) and then sign language class on Thursday mornings. PLUS I think PE on Wednesdays but we aren't sure of that just yet.
This year we are going to be quite busy. My boys will HAVE to get up earlier to accomplish everything on their plates. On Monday we have our homeschool co-op, and will not get back home until after 2 pm. This day is completely shot for any other school work. For those classes, the boys will have additional homework on top of their regular homeschool work. Every other Tuesday, the boys will have their Park Day with one of the hs groups we're in. To accomplish that, they will have to start some schoolwork at 8am-9:30 and then finish up when we get home. Wednesday, Thursday we're home Friday once a month is our literature club. Twice a month is another park day with the Christian homeschool group we're in. So we will be homeschooling 4 days a week, with extra days when dh has to work or when there is no co-op scheduled. In those 4 days they will be expected to complete 5 days of schoolwork, and if it's not done....we will have light summer work to finish.
