• Homeschooling 101: The Basics
  • Strategies & Tips for Parents
  • Printables & Downloads
  • Resources for Homeschooling
  • Our Curriculum: What We've Used
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise

Five J's Homeschool

Free Homeschooling Resources to Help Parents Raise Lifelong Learners

  • Homeschooling 101The Basics
  • Printables& Downloads
    • Free Gradebook+ Download
    • All Printables & Downloads
  • Strategies & TipsFor Parents
  • ResourcesFor Homeschooling
  • Our CurriculumWhat We've Used
  • See Recent Posts
  • Language Arts
  • Math
  • Science
  • Social Studies
  • Life Skills
You are here: Home / Homeschooling / Restructuring Our Homeschool Calendar

Filed Under: Homeschooling

Restructuring Our Homeschool Calendar

Blank Calendar

Creating more breaks in our homeschool calendar hopefully will prevent burnout by both the kids and parent/teachers.

Inspired by my blogging friend, Sonshine, we have completely revamped our schedule for the school year. For the last three full years, we've adopted a public-school-like schedule, beginning in late August, breaking for three to five days at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, one week in the spring, and then for summer break during June, July, and most of August.

But after reading Sonshine's post where she mentioned their school schedule, I started thinking about the disadvantages of our current school calendar, and how burned out we get by Thanksgiving break, only to have to struggle through three or four more weeks of school before taking another too-short break.

I quickly came to the conclusion that there must be a better way that would work for us. And here's what we came up with.

We'll basically school for twelve weeks, then take an extended six-week break over the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then we'll school for another twelve weeks, taking a two-week break in early April, around Easter. We'll go for another eight weeks, taking one week off for music camp in June at our church, and then finish the year over the last four weeks, ending July 10. Then summer break will still be seven weeks long, just long enough for the kids and me not to get stir crazy, but long enough to feel like a summer break.

With this adjusted schedule, we'll be able to take an extended breather between each long school session, a break long enough to actually relax and refresh ourselves before starting up again. The kids are pretty excited about the change since they'll have two big breaks during the year — in both winter and summer — and they'll still have a couple more one to two week breaks throughout the year.

Hopefully this new schedule will reduce the likelihood of burnout on my part, as well as keep the kids fresh and excited about school since they won't be chomping at the bit about Christmas for all of December while we're supposed to be doing school work. Plus, it's much easier to plan for twelve weeks at a time than for an entire 36 weeks. But like everything in homeschooling, this is not necessarily a permanent change. We'll have to see how it goes.

Here's our calendar for the rest of our school year. We have added the breaks in the homeschool calendar and the kids are rejoicing.

If you homeschool and have also adopted a school calendar that's different from a regular public school calendar, I'd love to hear about it. Do you school year-round? Leave a comment and let me know how you schedule your school year.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

You may also like:

  • How to Evaluate a Website's Credibility for Research Papers
  • Helpful Acronyms and Mnemonics for Remembering Things
  • 13 Creative Ways to Homeschool with 3×5 Cards
  • Why We Chose Homeschooling over Public School

Comments

  1. Sonshine says

    December 1, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    I think you will enjoy your new schedule. 🙂

    This is very similar to what we do here! 🙂 Now you have inspired me to write a more in-depth post as to what we exactly do for our school year. 🙂

    Sonshine’s last blog post..Celebration around the World–Hanukkah Unit Study

    Reply
  2. ResourceQueen says

    December 1, 2008 at 11:53 pm

    We just muddle through most of the time, but I do enjoy having more time off when the weather is nice. We take one week off for good weather field trips and outside playtime. We take a week off in October, November, March, April and May. We also take days off for all the family errands, dentist appointments, doctor appointments, vet visits, and other things that come up.

    Plus, this year we're dealing with some depression and distractibility problems that Lizzie is having. So we're doing about 5 classes instead of all of them, on the days we do have school. I'm sure we'll be doing a lot of school in the summer too!

    In the summer we take a week off for Sports World, Vacation Bible School, Choir Camp and a few more field trips. However, we don't have those fancy family vacations that I read about from my friend's emails and blogs, so I figure it's just what we do… experience life, go on field trips, take care of business, and do school every chance we get.

    God Bless Everyone!
    Jean Butts

    ResourceQueen’s last blog post..Thanksgiving Blessing

    Reply
  3. Jennifer says

    December 8, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    We pretty much follow the public school schedule because that is what my dh's schedule is. However we are always ready for a break come Thanksgiving. We might have to rearrange things next year. Thanks for the idea.

    Jennifer’s last blog post..Benefits of Rechargeable Batteries

    Reply
  4. Becky@purposefulhomemaking says

    December 31, 2010 at 3:09 pm

    This is a great idea! We're in our first year of homeschooling and I'm starting to realize the freedom we can have! Thanks for posting!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Free Printable Homeschool Planner
Homeschool Librarian: Your One-Stop Book List Resource

RSS Student News Daily

  • Remembering 9/11
  • September 11, 2001 – Never forget
  • Daily posting will resume later this month.
  • Did COVID-19 Begin as a Lab Leak in China?
  • Center for Viral Pathology
  • Off to College
  • Memorial Day 2021
  • News quiz for week ending 5/28/21
  • Memorial Day
  • John Cena caves to China with groveling apology
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclosure
  • Terms of Use

© 2007–2022 Five J's Homeschool. All rights reserved. Design by Five J's Design.