When you first hear the term “homeschooling year round,” many of you might have frightening visions of never ending lesson plans, never ending workbooks and textbooks, and never ending complaining children. But, that’s not what homeschooling year round really is.
Visit my Homeschooling Year Round Resource Page for helpful tips and resources to make a smooth transition to homeschooling year round!
It is actually a very RELAXED approach to homeschooling. Giving yourself an entire 52 weeks, 365 days, to “get it all done” feels much more doable, especially when you find yourself in the middle of a crisis or season that pulls you away from the classroom for much longer than you had anticipated.
In the Should You Homeschool Year Round podcast, I gave reasons why you might want to consider this option, but this post is going to assume you actually ARE considering it seriously, but aren’t sure how to schedule your year.
{If you would like to listen to the podcast for this post, you can find it HERE. The YouTube video is embedded at the bottom of this post if you would rather watch.}
The year round schedule we do is typically 4 days on, 1 day off. You can find a lot more of the specifics of what we do each day in THIS POST, but basically, we keep the same routine Monday – Thursday and then on Fridays we clean the house top to bottom to get it ready for the weekend. We call this our Home Blessing.
Our afternoons Monday – Thursday consist of various activities, many centered around our main curriculum – Tapestry of Grace. We also do something I call Special School. This allows us to get things in we often don’t find the time for during our “regular school hours.” (Things like See the Light Art and Tea Time.)
On Fridays, we will often have our Unit Celebrations for Tapestry of Grace or have company over or just have a party as a family (trust me, just my family alone on a Friday night is a party!). You can see an example of our Unit Celebrations HERE (Medieval Times) and also in the Instagram photo below (Roaring 20’s):
Another scheduling option is to do 3 weeks on, 1 week off – giving you 1 week a month that you aren’t schooling. This is great for taking the entire week of a holiday off or for taking that week to plan for the next 3 weeks. I know many homeschooling families who operate on this schedule and love it.
Likewise, you can do 3 months on and 1 month off. This could be an option for this fall – homeschool September through November, take all of December off.
What to do during the weeks you are not homeschooling.
I want to address your “off” day, week, or month because this is something super important to the entire concept of year-round homeschooling. I already told you what I do during our off day, but what if you are taking more than a day? Here are some ideas for what you could be doing during those times:
- Homeschool planning
- Deep cleaning
- Unit Studies
- Holiday related crafts and studies (I use Pinterest for inspiration!)
- Art & Music
- Nature Study (see my Nature Table for one simple way to do this!)
- Let your children pursue their passions!
- Vacation
- Visit family
- Serve others
- Read aloud from a series
- Take a homeschool mom sabbatical! (Read more about this HERE!)
A little more on holiday related studies –
We take the entire month of December off. During that time we are doing a lot of “fun school” full of crafts, Christmas hymn studies, and our Jesse Tree devotional. You can see some those things below:
Here’s the YouTube video on Year Round Homeschooling Schedules!
Shinga Gwatidzo says
This sounds so ideal and am definitely going to try this. I am homeschooling 3 and just had a baby 3 months ago. I have been trying to start a blog and also do some side hustles to earn extra income but right now just seems overwhelming. so I feel encouraged when fellow mum’s like you Amy seem to have a handle on all this without falling apart so how do you plan and execute all of it?
Debbie says
We also school year-round, and I find it much more relaxing. We don’t have a schedule we follow. “Official” school gets done on whatever days it can get done. But if we’re tied up with appointments, we’re sick, or for whatever reason we don’t get “official” school done that day, no big deal. It’s definitely best for my daughter who struggles to learn. We often do school on Saturdays, too. We just go with the flow. I like doing it like that.
Charisa says
We do Something similar (or at least we try to) to year round schooling, what we try to do is 6 four day weeks on 7th week off. Friday “school” isn’t really school so it counts as an off day. Momma just has us do some extra stuff in the morning like coloring, construct something, (even sewing fits this one!) and play an educational game, then the afternoon is spent getting ready for the sabbath.
Karis says
Great ideas, and they help me put it all together. I definitely want to do all year, but I don’t want to do Sabboth schooling because we need more than a week when we do get our breaks. I like both your options and your ideas for the non-schooling weeks. Thanks for all of this.
Amy says
You’re welcome, Karis!
Marle says
We follow a two week on, one week off (year round)to coincide with my husband’s work schedule. He works for 14 days, and then 7 off. That week we get nothing (formal) done, but we are very often on the road for trips that we use for life school. We all really enjoy that! We also do 4 days seat work and 1 work apps/games on the day my eldest has speech therapy. Living very remotely (2hours from civilization) gives me so much freedom to just do what I feel is right. Plus, my kids are still so small (8, 6 and 3).
Amy says
That is perfect! It’s so nice when we give ourselves permission to adjust our schedule and life to fit us rather than some arbitrary “rule.”