Thread: Weekly Poll: How do you handle vacation days as a homeschooler?

Since our family has moved more toward an "interest-led" homeschooling style, vacation days seem far less of an issue than they used to, but we've had all sorts of approaches to vacation over the years. Some years, we pretty much followed the school's calendar (for some reason I can't even remember now)....other years, we kind of did more of a year-round homeschooling, with various weeks off throughout.

What about you? How do you handle "vacation days" in your homeschool?

I put "we just take vacation days when we need them." We school year-round with no scheduled breaks and when it seems like my kids are feeling extremely frustrated or burnt out, we take the day off to do something fun instead! Sometimes I'm burned out, too, and need a vacation day.

Two of the answers fit us, so I went with 'Other' (since I could only choose one answer). We school year-round. We have some set breaks - 2 weeks at Christmas, 3 days to a week for Thanksgiving, our b-days, and a few other holidays (depending on what days they fall on & what our plans are), and a one month break between grades (for planning purposes). However, we also take time off when we need it. If it's been a busy, stressful month, we may decide to take off a few days or a week. If there's a family emergency, we'll take time off. When we moved, we did half days during the packing, moving, unpacking process. Right now, we're taking a 6 month break from structured school, while we all destress from the hectic, stressful year we've had. Dea has taken breaks to go on vacations with other family members. Our life is an ever-changing journey, and I work hard to maintain a structure that has the flexibility we require.

I see this as one of the best benefits of homeschooling - the ability to be flexible and run with what life throws at you. There's a natural rhythm that begins to exert itself in homeschooling, at least in our house. I rather enjoy the ebb and flow and am not opposed to taking a few days to a week's time off if that's what my gut is telling me we need to do. It almost always ends up that during our time "off", we end up learning cool stuff anyway, just not in a prescribed fashion - and that's a good thing! I answered that we take vacations as we need them

We school year round, and I plan specific vacation time, which breaks our 3 fifteen-week terms up throughout the year. I also schedule a 1-week Thanksgiving break during the first term. The other breaks are from Yule to a little after New Year's, from the end of April until just after Beltane (May 1), and then a four-week break from the end of our school year in August, until Labor Day.

We also feel free to take days off whenever for illness or a long weekend, but most of the time we stick with the scheduled breaks.

We follow the PS calendar because two of our three are in PS right now. When they're out of school on a short break, it's impossible to get the third to focus on school anyway. If the PS break is longer than a couple of days, everyone does school at home on those days.

This is our first year of homeschooling, but so far we have been taking days off when we have something special going on--a day trip, family visiting, etc. I love this flexibility! We will probably take a break between Christmas and New Years (my husband will be home that week). During the summer I hope to keep up with the "three R's" (so that they don't regress) and do a lot of nature study and hiking.

This is our first official year also. Last April when we pulled DS out of school, we eagerly jumped right into homeschooling for the entire first month. Then we went back home for the better part of a month and it took quite a while to adjust back to being here so we ended up taking all of May off. I had mentally planned for it so it wasn't a big deal. We sort of schooled/sort of unschooled for the remainder of the summer and started a more regular routine beginning in August.

So far we take days off when we need them but don't follow any particular holiday schedule, although since my husband gets all the federal and provincial holidays off we generally don't do much work on those days. We're going back home for the first part of December and then it will be thick into holiday time when we get back so we'll end up taking most of the month off. We may do some basics during that time (math and LA) just to keep a morning routine, but nothing strenuous or too exciting. We have a lot of new material to look forward to in January so we won't dawdle getting back on track.

I haven't yet decided if we'll formally school year round or unschool during the summer months, but either way our "summer" will probably be considerably shorter than the public school system so we can have the flexibility we want year round.

I answered, "when we know public schoolers are in school." We take a family trip once or twice a year and now that we're homeschooling, we love visiting sites when they're not overly crowded. We're all introverts and even Zack doesn't like a lot of kids running around! :-D We do plan our vacations ahead, though, because they have to coincide with my husband's vacation days from work.

We follow the private school calendar ( so we have some holiday time that isn't so busy every schoolkid ) with some flexibility to take trips etc out of those times. We didn't take scheduled holidays at first. Then we found it was the main time to catch up with friends who are at school. Also, the girl's dance school follows the school terms, so we were in that rhythm anyway. Also, it's like an enforced break for me from being homeschool mama and just being mama, which is helpful in our house.

One of my daughters is quite academic and she often works a reduced timetable of subjects for part of the holidays, as she gets bored if she goes for a long period without 'work'.