Hi friends!! Last week I explained what factors impacted our decision to homeschool. If you missed it, you can check it out here! This week I wanted to share how we came to the year round decision and how I managed to schedule it. I want to note ahead of time that this will be the more concise explanation of how I scheduled it. With that being said, I want to be transparent in saying that I really.... I mean reaaally struggled to understand the scheduling. I think that much of my struggle came from operating out of a traditional academic schedule that we have always been used to and trying to readjust my thinking was particularly confusing at times. I also greatly struggled with making sure that I was hitting the state requirements with homeschool because I wanted to be sure that I was doing everything properly. Now that I've had some time to really understand and get a handle on the scheduling, it makes much more sense now! If this is a task you're jumping into as well, I beg you to give yourself some grace, it isn't just going to come together all at once! Stick with it and it will all work out! (:
My first thought after deciding to homeschool was to figure out what it would even look like for our family team. Would it follow the academic calendar? 5 days a week? Year round? Co-op? Extracurriculars? Curriculum? Upon initial research I was finding that nearly every article referenced the HSLDA as your first stop for homeschool. I decided to check into it and realized that there were quite a few rules and regulations that you have to abide by when you homeschool. Fun fact, homeschool is legal in all 50 states. Not-so-fun fact, homeschool is made next to impossible in some states with restrictive laws and regulations. I realized pretty quickly into my research that the first step needed to be checking into the homeschool laws specific to Colorado. Thankfully, Colorado has a website dedicated to all things homeschool and it was truly a huge help for our family team. Once I had a more comprehensive understanding of what would be required, I began to look again at other homeschool resources, how to schedule and what to teach & how to teach it.
On the state page for homeschool requirements, they had a resources link at the bottom. I had clicked on it and found out that our school district in our city has a homeschool co-op that meets once a week for 7 hours. It gives the kids the opportunity to meet other homeschoolers, build social skills and take classes that may not be as easily attained in homeschool. It also allows for the building of a community of families with likeminded goals and aspirations for their children. I looked into their offerings and found that it would be a perfect addition to our homeschool. I was able to get Lucas added to their list of kids interested in the co-op and after quite a few steps through the school district I was able to get him fully enrolled in the co-op. Anyone who knows Lucas knows that he is already a pretty involved athlete and plays nearly every sport available to him. With the addition of the co-op, he is going to have a lot of opportunity for friendships and connections outside of our home throughout the year.
In much of my research I came across articles about year round homeschool. Initially I believed that meant that you just did homeschool 24/7 with no breaks... and if you're like me the thought of that feels a bit horrifying. As I looked into it more, I started to gain a better understanding of year round and how beneficial it could be. With the year round model, there is more time throughout the year to schedule breaks, more flexibility in scheduling during the week and, arguably most importantly, there is less need for recap. In the year round model you aren't spending 1-2 months in a recap of all that was taught the previous year because everyone forgot what they learned while on summer vacation for 2-3 months. The idea of year round homeschool really spoke to me and our family team as a whole. It gave us the freedom to schedule time off throughout the year, which really works best for us since we don't have 2-3 months off at a time, ever. In order to schedule out the year, I found Tina. On her blog, she shares about all things homeschool and she had just the calendar that I was looking for. I have always loved paper planners and doing all of the creative planning with stickers and fun markers. But I also know that I am in a season of my life where having things be available to me digitally is more functional. I got an iPad and an apple pencil for digital planning several months ago and it has been such a blessing to my entire planning process now including homeschool. I took Tina's fabulous homeschool planning calendar and added it to a page in my digital planner. I then utilized highlighting, marking and symbols to plan out our schedule for homeschool.
In order to figure out the schedule for the year, I went through and first marked off the days I knew we would want to have off for the year. When I was researching many people said to start with the day you want to start and then the day you want to end and fit everything into that. Because it was our first year doing this, I wasn't sure when I would need to start and when I would need to end. So, I started with what I knew wouldn't change based on the holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas & Spring break all stay consistent each year, especially with Lucas in the co-op as their calendar defines which weeks are off weeks for the holiday breaks. Then I looked at which of the holidays fell on a weekday that daddy would also have off from work and marked those off as days that we would get to spend as a family. I then added in the days that we had scheduled for the co-op as well as the days that he was scheduled for sports and/or extracurriculars. Once all of that was in place, I calculated out the requirements to see how many days during the week we would need to have in order to meet the state requirements. The co-op only operates on a traditional public school schedule, so in the state of Colorado, it runs from August to May. I wasn't sure if because it wasn't a year round co-op it would hinder our scheduling, but after calculating everything out I realized that with everything else that Lucas is involved in all throughout the year, we could have 3 day school weeks at home all year. Having a 3 day school week allowed for me to still have time to work from home during the week, run errands and clean house without everything completely falling apart! In seeing that we would be able to have such a schedule setup, I scheduled with the co-op for his one day a week to be on Thursdays. This allowed for us to do homeschool Monday-Wednesday, co-op on Thursday and then have a three day weekend, EVERY weekend! It was a setup that I thought would work out really well for all of us and would give us something to look forward to. Once I had those things figured out, I realized that in our family it makes the most sense for summer break to be the last week of June and the first week of July, giving us the 4th of July week off to celebrate that holiday as well as celebrating Lucas' birthday before starting school. It is a way for us to have a fun little summer break for a couple of weeks and then dive back into schooling.
The best thing about Tina's calendar is the bottom line underneath each month that has days and weeks listed. It allows for quick fact checking when determining if I have hit the required days/weeks for the school year per the state requirements. Rather than having to count each day, I just note each month on the line and then add them all up at the end and enter it into the little box at the bottom left of the page. It has made it so much easier for me to adjust as we've gotten into it. After I had the breaks, co-op, and intended start and stop dates established, I utilized the week & day counts at the bottom of each month to determine how much time we were going before taking breaks. I realized in a couple of instances that we were going rather long stretches without any breaks, so I went in and marked off about halfway through as weeks we would take off from homeschool. Once all of that was accounted for I went back to check my math, ensuring that with the schedule as I had it, we would be hitting the required days/weeks for the school year. Not only were we hitting it, we were exceeding it which is not a brag, but an important factor in case of unexpected illness or needed days off that aren't foreseen in the beginning.
I think a key factor in finally being able to unlock the understanding of year round homeschool and how to schedule it was to understand that not everything is going to be flawless. There are requirements that need to be heeded, but there is also a number of days that I can look back on during my time in the public school system that we spent entire weeks or even multiple weeks watching movies in class, having parties, and/or doing busy work that served little to no purpose other than to keep us... busy. While there are time requirements and intended subjects to teach, there is also way more opportunity for that kind of learning to happen daily. Getting bogged down on the specifics can keep you from being willing to dive in or keep you believing that you can't do it. I have learned pretty quickly that there is a lot that we do on a regular basis that isn't scheduled in that counts toward Lucas' learning and growth. Having a rough outline and the ability to fill out an attendance schedule if it is needed for the school district at a given time is really helpful, but otherwise, the specifics don't need to take over the enjoyment and overall freedom that is gained through homeschool.
Once I had the requirements understood, the co-op enrollment finished, and the schedule created I was able to figure out what the heck we would be learning. Furthermore I was able to figure out where our homeschool days would take place within our comfortable but not large home. Next week I will dive more into our curriculum choices and how we utilized the space available to us for homeschool. As it turns out, you CAN homeschool without a designated homeschool room! (; I hope that you'll hang out with me again next week, friends. Our homeschool journey has been a lot of fun. As my nieces' grandma says, "It's a lifestyle." So much has changed for Team Yearley as we have taken on homeschool and it really has been a lifestyle change for us. While it certainly has its growing pains like any other big change does, this has been such a healthy and exciting transition for us all.
I pray that wherever this finds you today, that you are happy, healthy, & enjoying your day!
Xx,
Mama Yearley
Comments