Littlest one is having a slow morning playing with her little people and sporting some seriously skinned knees. There has been LOTS of bike riding when the weather has cooperated and this kid is FAST. Don't tell her she can't keep up with her big sisters. : )
You can definitely tell that last week was spring break ... I have had very little extra time on the computer this week and thus blogging has fallen by the wayside. We have forty days of school left which still takes us in to mid-May, but forty means the end is in sight. I'm also working on school plans for next year ... brainstorming things that I want to do with the girls this summer and writing down each and every curriculum idea that I have for the fall ... which will then be whittled down to what is actually doable. : )
One question I have for those that homeschool out there ... how do you set your school calendar? Do you follow (even loosely) the local school system? Is it set by the co-op or tutorial you are part of? I'm thinking through how I want to plan next year since I will be on my own. I know I do better if I have breaks every so often so I'm trying to decide if I should lay out out our work so that we break every 8 weeks, do a 4-day week and take Fridays off (or make them 1/2 days), etc. Do you have a system that has worked for you? I'd love to hear them!
More soon ... : )
We start the first full week after Labor Day and get out whenever we finish our curriculum. We take a couple weeks of at Christmas time and the boys get their birthdays off. I don't do all the public school days off. Hope you find what works for you and your family!!
ReplyDelete@Photographing Mom: Thanks for sharing! : )
ReplyDeleteStephanie,
ReplyDeleteThis has been our first "real" year...kindergarten with both kiddos but so far so good. We didn't actually start the kindergarten cirriculum until mid Oct. For us, we school until something comes up or the kids are needing a bit of a break. We were able to take 2 weeks off at Christmas and random days. Just Tuesday night I was sitting down with the calendar scheduling out the rest of the cirriculum and despite my concern that we were behind, we're not. Right on track. I've scheduled us through July. We will be taking the first 2 weeks of May of to head back to TN and then there will be a few lighter weeks due to camping. Right now I'm enjoying the flexibilty we have. From the time I decided to homeschool (as soon as I found out I was pregnant with Jonathan) I knew that I wouldn't follow the traditional school schedule. We didn't want to give the kids the entire summer off. I'm not sure if we'll even take the entire month of August off before beginning grade 1.
This is our 3rd year of homeschooling and it's been different each time. Unfortunately I've not been good about sticking to my plan but each year I've gotten a little better.
ReplyDeleteWe have loosely followed the calendar for our home school co-op and it follows the local school districts (many families involved home school younger siblings with older kids in P.S.). I'm also thinking through next school year, even though we won't be finished with this year until mid-June. I'm leaning towards NOT participating in co-op next year which would open things up for me calendar-wise. I've learned this year that I'm really only good for about 4 straight weeks of school and then I crash. So I think I'll build breaks in for those.
Another idea I learned from a veteran home school mom is to keep track of field trips and outings that you take during the summer and "bank" those as school days. Here in RI we have to track 180 days so "banking" days might not be an issue for you in TN.