Under normal circumstances, I would have recently posted my meal plan for the month. However, I will not be posting my meal plans this month or next month because things are chaotic around here. We are moving in October, and the activities associated with this move are going to keep us from adhering closely to a menu.
What I will post is our calendar for the 2023-2024 school year. We are continuing to use a year-round approach for our homeschooling. Why do we use this approach? You can find out all about why it works best for us here.
Here is our calendar for this school year.
Because of our move, this will undergo some changes. One great thing about how I plan the calendar is that adjustments can be made easily—days that we miss during our move can be made up during weeks we are scheduled to have as breaks.
If you are looking for an example year-round calendar, then I hope this is useful to you! I will not go into great detail regarding how I decide which days we will have school and which days will be breaks because I’ve already written a detailed post about this. You can view it here. However, I will touch on some highlights.
Where to start when planning a year-round schedule
- Determine how much time you must spend homeschooling to comply with state law. Your state may mandate that homeschoolers be in school for a certain number of days and/or hours each year. Know these requirements and plan your calendar accordingly.
- Determine how many days of school are needed to complete the materials you’d like to cover during the year. You will need sufficient time to complete your materials. If you can complete the materials in less time than is required by state law, then select additional materials and activities (such as field trips) so you are in school for the required time.
- Determine which days you would like to have off as holidays. We take time off for Christmas and Thanksgiving, but we often complete school on other holidays (e.g., Labor Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day). You can decide which holidays you want off and take note of these on your calendar.
- Determine when you want to take breaks. Using a year-round approach gives you lots of flexibility regarding when you take breaks. Our approach is to take a 1-week break for every 4 weeks of school we complete. You may like this break interval, or you may wish to do something different (for example, a 2-week break for every 8 weeks of school or a trimester approach). There are many possibilities!
How I plan my year-round schedule
As I stated above, I’ve already provided a detailed explanation of how to make a schedule like this. Here is an abbreviated explanation.
- I use an MS Excel calendar template (this particular template is called “Yearly Calendar Template”). Dates shaded in yellow are vacation days, underlined dates are school days, and italic dates are days off or makeup days.
- I begin by marking off the dates around Christmas and Thanksgiving. Moving backwards from Thanksgiving, I mark four weeks for school, then a week off. I repeat this twice, resulting in a start date of August 14th. I mark the three weeks between Thanksgiving break and Christmas break as being school days. After Christmas break, I complete the rest of the calendar by interchanging 4-week periods of school with 1-week breaks. This gives us an end date of July 19th.
This calendar provides us with 39 weeks of school. It won’t take us this long to complete many of our books, but it is useful to have the time available because we can move slowly if my kids are having difficulties in any subjects. Likewise, it gives us plenty of days to make up work if we miss days earlier in the year and we’ll have time to go on plenty of field trips. If we do complete any materials early, we can always begin next year’s books!
How do you organize your school year? Have you ever tried a year-round approach? What works for your family?
Leave a Reply