Homeschooling and the Importance of an Off Week

homeschool, schedule / By
Good morning!
It might be the week after Labor Day, but no, we aren’t doing school this week!  One of the most important things I’ve learned from homeschooling is the importance of an off week from time to time.

Typically we do about 4 weeks on and then 1 week off.  At the beginning of the school year I printed a calendar, marked all holidays and birthdays and then worked out our school year with 36 weeks of lessons.
Typically I have 1 week off per month, with 2 weeks at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

To make that schedule work, we started school really early.  With luck, we’ll finish about the same time as our public school friends so that we will be able to play when they get out of school and be done in time for VBS.  The main reasons I plan my schedule this way is simple.  Mama needs a break!

Just about the time when I begin to get overwhelmed with school and the housework is piling up and I feel like I just can’t catch up, POOF!  Here’s an off week to help me catch up and recuperate!

So what do we do on our off weeks?

  1. We catch up on laundry and house cleaning.
  2. We run errands we had been putting off.
  3. We cook a lot.
  4. We still attend karate, piano and other activities.
  5. We attend field trips.
  6. We still do school, but shhhhhhh!  Don’t tell the kids!
What kind of school do we do on our off weeks?
  1. We watch movies relating to our studies.  We might not always have time to do this, but it’s a great use of spare time on off weeks.  This week for example, we are watching a documentary on the Civil War as well as Gone With the Wind.  I’ll pop popcorn and try to make it a fun experience.  On our last break week, we met friends to watch Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.
  2. We might visit the McWane Science Center in Birmingham and see whatever IMAX movie is playing.  Yesterday, we took advantage of Eric’s off day and he actually got to go too!  We saw the Great White Shark movie and then went downstairs to pet the sharks and rays in the touch tank.
  3. The kids might visit grandparents.
  4. Sometimes we play a bit of catch-up if we’ve fallen behind.
  5. We listen to audiobooks.  Lucas in particular is obsessed with the Percy Jackson series, (really, anything by Rick Riordan) but his reading isn’t quite adequate to read the books by himself.  

So, aside from the mountains of laundry and other chores that we tackle, we do try to have a good bit of fun on our off weeks!  It is a great time for us to re-energize and get ourselves prepared and excited for the next block of schooling.  
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