Are you considering changing up your homeschool year schedules? Did you know that you don’t have to keep to a traditional public school schedule for your academic year? In fact, you can bust out of the traditional box as much as you want to! Embrace the freedom and flexibility that homeschooling brings and consider which academic year schedule would work best for your unique family.
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What is an Academic Year?
An academic year is typically considered to be 180 days. Where do we get that number?
School years run for 36 weeks of five days, totally that magic number of 180 academic days. That leaves you with 16 weeks of break, which can be divided out over the year. Many of us like a longer Christmas holiday break, plus a sizable summer break and a few more other weeks thrown in.
If you grew up in a public or private school using the traditional academic calendar, then you know what it’s like to complete those 180 days of instruction in a typical “traditional” arrangement.
But when you’re homeschooling, you can schedule out your academic year in any way that fits YOUR unique family! Download the creative ways to schedule your homeschool academic year below.
Listen to the Podcast!
Want to hear these seven creative ways to schedule your homeschool academic year fleshed out? Then tune into this episode! Here’s episode 259 of the Homeschool with Moxie Podcast, where we discuss these options.
Ways to Schedule Out Your Homeschool Year
There may be 101 unique ways to schedule out your homeschool year, but here are the top most popular choices that we discuss on the podcast.
Traditional School Year
- approximately 36 weeks of school, 5 days per week
- large summer break, plus other holidays
- 16 weeks total of break
Three Terms
- 3 terms x 12 weeks with approximately 5 weeks off in between terms
- Term 1: Sept., Oct., Nov., then 5 weeks off
- Term 2: Jan., Feb., Mar., then 5 weeks off
- Term 3: May, June, July, then 6 weeks off
- You can move vacation weeks around as needed and still have a longer summer.
6 Weeks On / 1 Week Off
- you can do the 6/1 variation year-round
- OR do 3 weeks on / 1 week off (3 weeks on x 12 months = 36 weeks)
4 Days Per Week
- if you “do school” 4 days per week, you can take off one weekday
- one day off can be for errands, work for teen, etc.
- 45 weeks of 4 days gives you 180 days
Looping
- make a list and the desired frequency of each (ex: art – 1x week, science 3x weekly)
- write out your loop and check off
- do the next thing on your list at your specific loop time of the day (morning time or lunchtime work well)
Blocks / Semester
- think: college schedule
- great for dual-enrolled high school kids
- instead of doing every subject all year, you could do grammar/history/math for one semester but longer each day, then switch to math/science/lit the next semester
Year-Round Homeschooling
- 6 terms of 6 weeks each with breaks built in
- you can take 5 weeks off at Christmas and still have 11 weeks for other breaks plus summer off
HWM 292: Block Scheduling for High School
When you’re homeschooling, you don’t have to keep a traditional schedule at any time, but especially not in the high school years. Here’s how to creatively schedule out the high school years for maximum impact.
Here’s Episode 292 of the Homeschool with Moxie Podcast:
More Resources for Homeschool Planning & Scheduling
Learn how to be more effective in your homeschool planning & scheduling with these resources and tips:
- Why you need homeschool routines rather than schedules
- Do you need Homeschool Scheduling changes?
- Easy homeschool scheduling with Trello
- Tips for homeschool schedules
- Back to Homeschool Ideas
