8 Top Tips for Year-Round Homeschooling

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If you’ve been homeschooling for any length of time, you’ve probably heard about year-round homeschooling. It is a popular approach to Home Education that throws out the public school schedule and forgoes the long summer break. It’s nothing short of awesome sauce.

But I often hear about concerns and challenges with year-round homeschooling. Ones like this:

“What about summer fun?”

“Won’t the kids get burned out?”

“Won’t I get burned out?”

“How do you even organize something like that?”

While there are fantastic benefits to homeschooling year-round, there are a few tips you should know about to make it really work well for your family!

8 Top Tips for Year-Round Homeschooling

Our family of 8 has been homeschooling from the beginning (our oldest is in 4th grade now). We’ve been year-found schooling the whole time! Along the way, we’ve learned a few tips and tricks along the way and I want to share those with YOU!

Whether you’re just starting out or are an experienced homeschooler wanting to give year-round homeschooling a whirl, you’ll find something useful here.

Block Out Vacations

The first thing is to pull out a calendar (a year-at-a-glance one works best) and block off planned vacations. We start with a few weeks at Christmas, one at Easter, one around the Fourth of July, and a few in September.

DO take vacations! The beauty of homeschooling, especially year-round homeschooling, is that you can take those vacations when they work for you! We do ours on important holidays and in the fall when everyone is back to school and the weather is still beautiful. Bonus!

Build in Breaks

You’re also going to want to build in regular breaks for your family. Nobody wants burnout! The best way to avoid burnout up front is to establish routines that build in margin. There are several different ways to do this. Here are just a few we’ve done:

• Try a 4-day homeschool week for academics
• Set aside a catch-up and Home Ec. day (we call it “Home Blessing Day“)
• Try a 6-week-on 1-week-off schedule (commonly called “Sabbath Homeschooling”)
• If that’s too long of an interval, try a 4-week-on 1-week-off schedule like we’ve done

Account for Curriculum Schedules

If you decide you want to complete a year’s worth of math in the school year, you’ll need to do a little calculating to make sure you have enough days of school after all those vacations and breaks. From my experience, you end up with plenty of time and then some, but I still do that checking every quarter to see where we are with reading, math, and language arts curriculum (the other subjects I don’t care as much about timelines).

Simply figure out how many lessons you have left in math, for example, divide that by how many days you do school each week (we do 4) and you’ll see how many school weeks you’ll need to complete that work. You’ll be able to see if you need to make adjustments to get done sooner or can slow down and spend more time on something else!

Plan for Planning

You’ll also want to build in regular times for planning. If you don’t take the time to prepare, you’ll be scrambling all the time and that can lead to burnout fast.

Here’s what I do (these go on the calendar so they don’t get missed!):

• Finish the homeschool day with 30 minutes of grading and prepping for the next day
• Put an hour or so for planning and prepping on your calendar – mine is every Saturday evening
• Set aside a half day before the beginning of each quarter for big-picture planning and sketching out the quarter’s goals, field trips, projects, etc.
• Set aside a few days each year for yearly planning, re-capturing the vision, etc (mine always coincides with the state homeschool conference we attend)

Be Flexible in That Planning!

Different homeschoolers have different styles when it comes to homeschool planning and you’ll want to find what works best for you. My experience has been that I do not do well with strict schedules and detailed lesson plans. Instead, I use a relaxed approach to my homeschool planning that works really well! It is a planning strategy that is based on routines and rhythms.

I also make use of loop scheduling. Loop scheduling allows for a way to easily incorporate ALL those homeschool subjects you just don’t have time for every day. It’s also a really effective tool for homemaking, chores, and fostering independence in homeschool students. You can find out more about how I use loop scheduling here.

{Limited Time Code!} Get 20% off home and homeschool organization products (plus the My First Kitchen Binder for Kids) through July 1! Use code “Homeschool101” at checkout. 

Make Room for Summer Activities

You don’t have to give up fun and memorable summer days just for year-round homeschooling. Again, that’s the beauty of it! If you are having an amazing week of weather and the pool is calling or you want to go fishing or camping, go for it!

Do homeschool activities that double as learning activities! It’s a perfect time for nature studies, field trips, and more. We tend to schedule in all those fun activities and just do a light load of homeschool.

Keep Things Fresh and Interesting

One thing that is common is to just get bored with the same old school activities and routines in a year-round schedule. To prevent boredom, intentionally change things up! Here are some ideas.

• Alternate science and history units (instead of trying to squeeze in both all the time)
• Pick new curriculum or subjects to focus on just for the summer
• Do unit studies for the holidays
• Allow your kids to research on a topic of their choice and then present it (we call it “inquiry”)
• Incorporate activities your whole family enjoys (hiking, Legos, gardening, stop-motion, etc.)
• Connect with other homeschool families and share activities and experiences together

Celebrate First/Last Day of Homeschool

Just because you aren’t stopping and starting school on the same schedule as public schools doesn’t mean you can’t have great celebrations!

We end our homeschool year in July, so each year we get together with another homeschool family for a big celebration to recognize our kids, take photos, and give them goodie bags filled with fun thing for the coming year.

Celebrate those milestones and have fun with your homeschool! Here are some other ideas:

• Have a NOT back to school day when public school starts
• Do PJs all day and a fun breakfast
• Have a family fun day with board games
• Go on a special field trip as a family

How Do YOU Make Year-Round Homeschooling Great?

It’s your turn! Tell us your experience with year-round homeschooling, what you might like to try from the list above, or your own great tip to share with others!

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I’m Tauna! This is me: Jesus follower, wife, mom, [domestically challenged] homemaker, homeschooler, and writer. Join me at ProverbialHomemaker.com, where I work to bring you encouragement and tools for the journey. Let us pursue God’s call on our lives (no matter the learning curve) and rely on Him to equip us for the task! Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

 

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This is day 14 of my Homeschooling 101 Blog Party!  I’m so glad you are here! Stay tuned because we have more veteran homeschool moms sharing their tips with you almost every day right here. Oh and don’t forget to join the exclusive Facebook group to chat it up with our bloggers, ask questions and just be a part of our amazing and growing community!

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