So we may go through some life changes in the next month. It would mean hubby being home to sleep during the day M-TH, so I would have to keep the kids quiet during the day. He would be home and awake on Fridays, and well when he is floating around the house school just doesn't get done at all. We could use Friday as a day for field trips or just hanging around with daddy. As silly as it sounds, I'm kind of scared of going to a 4 day schedule. Am I weird?
We kind of do a 4 day schedule. Our main work is Mon thru Thurs. Fridays are catch up days for any work not completed during the week. So we usually have 5 day weeks.
Trail Guide to Learning, which we are using this year, is set up with 4 days of work and then extra ideas for further study. Fridays tend to be crazy in our house so we haven't been doing much with those ideas. So basically we are schooling 4 days a week. I do have my boys do stuff for their church scout type group on Friday because usually it is stuff they can get done without a ton of help. The kids love not having school on Friday.
We do 4 days! I love the extra day for house work, and things that don't get done on other days. We don't have a problem getting things done during the rest of the week, and get all of our schooling done. If you are worried try and sit and figure out how much you would have to get done to finish your stuff in the time frame you want to do. Like to finish your math in a year. We do school 4 days a week, and take weeks off at different times and still ended up finishing a month early.
Well, we have to do 180 days or 900 hours in our state. To get the days at 4 days a week we would need to do 45 weeks instead of 36. Really I could still count most Fridays.
heck yeah, public schools do. Do you know how many days we only watched movies cause we had a sub that didn't want to teach another teachers class, yet they counted it!
In 8 years I have never done a 4 day week more than a few times a year when sickness or random things have come up. The thought feels so weird to me lol
We used to do a 4 day week. And we still do on Coop weeks (our coop meets every other week). It works. However, if you live in a state where you have to count days, like I do, it means your schooling a longer amount of time in the year. That's sort of why we stopped. I got sick of feeling like I HAD to do a field trip of the 5th day.
The whole getting in enough days to meet the state requirement is what makes me most nervous. I like the idea of schooling year around, and we have already moved our schedule to where we start our new year in July, but still we have only schooled for 36 weeks, we just take off a bit more often for a whole week at a time and take off lots at Christmas and a decent summer break. I'm not worried about having to prove we worked on Fridays, and I'm ok with a very relaxed learning environment... to the point of dreaming of being unschoolers, but too afraid to do it with our state laws. Things that naturally occur in my home on a daily basis that I can make Friday count for: Every single day Reagan will watch a science show (Mythbusters, Dude, What Would Happen, Destroy Build Destroy etc) Every single day Rylee will make something artistic. She draws, colors, cuts and has even started creating things on the computer that she prints out and cuts out into "paper doll" type things. Every single day they read. Every single day we talk about the world around us... the weather, how many deer were in the yard today, how many more were in the field, looking for little critters (salamanders, insects, etc), we talk about the birds in the area (the ospray that hang around, the pretty blue birds, why the cardinals and blue jays fight), what could have eaten our entire garden. We take walks through the woods when we can, and having Fridays with daddy home we could do this more often. There is a fossil pit not too far away we could visit. Once in a while we could load up and head to Harrisburg for the museum... maybe even discover some closer to home since Harrisburg is a 2 hour drive each way. These are all things I won't do with the kids by myself. There is also lots of Magic School Bus, Beakman's World, Martha Speaks, Word Girl, Fetch, Wild Kratts, etc on Netflix and they watch lots of that stuff. Shhhhhh don't tell them they are learning I'm thinking if I wanted to keep a fairly similar school year, I could call Friday "F-Unschool Friday" and let the kids learn in a completely natural way. I need to look at Reagan's math, I believe it is set up for 160 days, so if we did 40 weeks of 4 days a week and counted 20 of those 40 Fridays, we would be good. Rylee's I am sure would fit in 160 workdays. I already count Monday holidays that we might not do bookwork on as a school day... because we talk about the holiday and celebrate it (the bigger ones anyway... Labor Day, Memorial Day). Krista, even in you don't go somewhere on Friday and spend the whole day cleaning that is learning Oh and if you spend the whole day sitting on the sofa watching tv and relaxing... that is health class... we need our rest and downtime too you know
Do you have to count it by actual days or by hours? In NYS we go by hours and we easily come in above hours.
We can do either but the thought of logging hours is daunting to me. It's much easier for me to put a checkmark on a calendar to count the days.
Math is the only predefined curricula we use Reagan uses McRuffy which has 160 lessons, Ry is using TTwhich send to be under 140 lessons a year at least through 5th grade so hers could be done in 36 4 day weeks. Reagan's. Could be done in 40.
F-Unschool Friday! Love it! That's what we do and I'm stealing the name! We never have been very formal (but are getting more formal because my kids want to) but Friday's are total 100% unschooling life lessons! We run errands and grocery shop all day on Fridays. The kids help with the grocery shopping, we discuss price per oz, comparison shopping, planning routes to save gas, reading maps (GPS or printed) to get to new places, discuss nutrition, and just discuss life as we drive the 30 minutes to the grocery store. Then when we get home they get to play outside and watch TV (educational shows-usually science based). So that's reading, math, life skills, home ec, science, social studies, health, and PE covered that day.
When you get to high school, they PREFER hours because it's how they determine a "credit" I think High School is 990 hours - which my daughter easily does. She takes a class on Monday Mornings and one on Friday Mornings, she spends many of her evenings doing schoolwork, too. She also spends A LOT of time doing artwork and crafting, and runs her own small business (we're working on getting her an etsy shop). I do count ALL of that! Thankfully, so does her evaluator. She also counts when she works a full day at a craft show/fair type thing (she has only done 1, but it was two days and the evaluator said to count it)…she has another one coming up in December. Oh, and BELIEVE me Somer, I get awfully creative in counting my days! I count our sick days because usually my kids will spend time reading, watching educational tv, etc.
The diploma program we will go with, if we go with one, doesn't require hours necessarily. There are like 6 options to choose from to prove each subject... 1 is logging hours for that subject, 1 is finishing 3/4 of a textbook, 1 is writing a report that is like 10 pages long, 1 is giving a 30 minute speech to someone outside your family, 1 is taking a college course, and the last is taking an AP exam and passing it. Also we are only in 3rd, 2nd and preK right now, I have a long time to worry about that all (but already am working on having my ducks in a row). Once they are old enough to log their own hours we will probably make that switch... but for now, it's all on me and keeping up with what each of 3 kids is up to in order to log hours is not my bag of chips....lol.
Which one are you using, again? I can't remember. I know ours will accept what you said, but the one lady made it sound like they preferred the hours to be sure. THANKFULLY, my evaluator is on their approved list and she doesn't really make me track them….although, I can see how if I did, my oldest would be way over. As I sit here and type this, she's already up on a Sunday working on her writing assignment for coop on Weds. LOL I'm sure she'll put in a couple hours today on that assignment and finishing her biology homework for her class tomorrow morning! HA HA HA HA!!!!
We will use Erie if we use one at all. Our evaluator is on their list as well, so it makes it feel less scary to have to answer to someone else. I know my kids will need to be able to get grants if they want to go to college, so I really think we will use the program so they can apply for them.
I would try to get the math, LA, science, and history in on M - Th. I'd leave miscellaneous or more minor things for on Friday...like art, maybe geography if you do that, etc. But, I would definitely still count Friday as a school day. If I *had* to count hours....I'd figure that if they are doing any of their school work that day then that's a full day. I wouldn't be clocking in minutes/hours and be worried about keeping track of it. Once they are doing something for school that day...then they are in school that day. Whether part of the day includes helping fix lunch, folding towels, watching something "educational" (at least somewhat) on tv, picking up toys, jumping on the trampoline, rolling down the hill, digging for worms, looking for salamanders, playing in the tub (after digging for worms and looking for salamander. I'm thinking of your specific kids ya know :lol, being read a bedtime story.....to me, it all counts. I'd figure out how many hours are counted each day if your kid were at the public school and count that many hours for the day.
