This year I intended to begin Year-Round Schooling in our homeschool. Our start date was July 21st. When thinking about whether I wanted to follow the traditional school calendar or veer away from that and do Year-Round Schooling, I am leaning more and more towards doing Year-Round Schooling and here is why:

Flexibility

When I printed off a July 2015-June 2016 calendar and started planning what days would be school days and what days would not, I began to see the flexibility schooling year round provides.

• Start Date: Monday, July 6th
• October 2015: take one week off for Fall Break
• November 2015: take one week off for Thanksgiving week
• December 2015: take two weeks off for Christmas Break
• March 2016: take one week off for Spring Break
• We would have our 180 days of school in on April 15th!
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Except, by April 15th we probably won’t have our 180 school days in because….

4-day weeks

If we start school in July and take the weeks mentioned above off, we will have FIFTY-FIVE flex days, which basically means we can take one day per week off! Or we can do more 5 day weeks so we can plan to be off the month of June if we want. Having the flexibility to not have to worry about school work one day a week has to be such a huge stress reliever to a homeschool mom!

Leaves room for Real Life to happen

Life is going to happen and I think it is wise to plan our school year accordingly. If we have these 55 flex days built into our homeschool calendar, there is a far less likely chance we will be lagging behind come February of each school year. This takes the pressure off to have our year complete by May or June of every year. Life is bound to happen. The laundry will pile up, the house will get dirty, and some days it will just be too beautiful outside to stay inside and we will want to spend the whole day out in the backyard! This extra day in our school week will serve so many purposes: housework day, play day, catch up day, appointment day. No need to feel stressed that we didn’t get to math that day because we were at the dentist office all morning!

Homeschooling can be our way of life

Year-Round Homeschooling allows homeschooling to be our way of life. Instead of taking a whole summer off and falling out of our normal routines, we will be able to keep our structured routine which we all thrive on. A week or so of vacation is nice (which is why I do have several weeks scheduled to be off throughout the year) but an extended period of time off just seems pointless. I’d rather have the flexibility to take a day off per week to catch up on life as the year goes by. A day off here and there will be refreshing. Year Round schooling will give us the gift of time. We can chase those rabbit trails of learning that aren’t always necessarily in my lesson plan book. We will still be able to complete our planned school work because we have so many days available to complete it.

- Elaine