I have been tossing around an idea for next year's schedule, and I think I have come to a decision.
Eli and Brynne's school schedule will not coincide with Dawson's. He is insistent that he stick to the public school schedule so that he is out of school at the same time as his public school friends. Makes sense.
But I have visions of longer breaks in the school year for Eli and Brynne, and primarily me. And, I would like to start having school on Saturdays for them, as well, with Science Saturdays with their daddy. Then I was looking at the calendar and noticed that the 2012 Summer Olympics are at the end of July, which would be a perfect unit study for them. All of these things combined helped me to come up with the following schedule for next year.
We will have school Monday through Friday, as "normal", and Science Saturdays, having lessons and doing projects with their daddy. (I love the idea of including him in their schooling and in him sharing his passion of science with them. They will enjoy it so much more, because science is my weak area.)
We will begin school on July 23rd, starting our unit on the Olympics. They won't even get that school has started! This is the benefit of interest-led learning!
We will take off the week of September 3rd.
We will take off the week of October 15th.
We will take a HUGE break from November 19th to January 7th.
We will take off from March 18-April 1st.
We will end school on May 4th.
That gets us our 180 days.
On the days we are off and Dawson is in school, he will have days of independent work and large projects that do not require my daily help and supervision. He does this pretty often, anyway, but it will just be more planned and concentrated. Most of those days we will be around, I just won't be teaching.
His school year will start on August 13th and will end on May 31st.
I offered him our schedule, but he would just rather have the "whole summer" and breaks off with his friends. I tried to explain that our summer will be starting a month before his, but he wasn't deterred. That's fine. I want his schedule to work for him and ours to work for us.
What do you think about this? Have you ever had different schedules for your students?
Eli and Brynne's school schedule will not coincide with Dawson's. He is insistent that he stick to the public school schedule so that he is out of school at the same time as his public school friends. Makes sense.
But I have visions of longer breaks in the school year for Eli and Brynne, and primarily me. And, I would like to start having school on Saturdays for them, as well, with Science Saturdays with their daddy. Then I was looking at the calendar and noticed that the 2012 Summer Olympics are at the end of July, which would be a perfect unit study for them. All of these things combined helped me to come up with the following schedule for next year.
We will have school Monday through Friday, as "normal", and Science Saturdays, having lessons and doing projects with their daddy. (I love the idea of including him in their schooling and in him sharing his passion of science with them. They will enjoy it so much more, because science is my weak area.)
We will begin school on July 23rd, starting our unit on the Olympics. They won't even get that school has started! This is the benefit of interest-led learning!
We will take off the week of September 3rd.
We will take off the week of October 15th.
We will take a HUGE break from November 19th to January 7th.
We will take off from March 18-April 1st.
We will end school on May 4th.
That gets us our 180 days.
On the days we are off and Dawson is in school, he will have days of independent work and large projects that do not require my daily help and supervision. He does this pretty often, anyway, but it will just be more planned and concentrated. Most of those days we will be around, I just won't be teaching.
His school year will start on August 13th and will end on May 31st.
I offered him our schedule, but he would just rather have the "whole summer" and breaks off with his friends. I tried to explain that our summer will be starting a month before his, but he wasn't deterred. That's fine. I want his schedule to work for him and ours to work for us.
What do you think about this? Have you ever had different schedules for your students?
It looks like a great plan! I've never tried different schedules with them but I'm sure it'll come at some point. It's great to see how someone else had laid out their plan - thanks!
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