One of the great things about homeschooling is getting to set our own schedule. We get to decide when we do work, when we get to play and when it’s ok to put off work to play.
One thing I hadn’t considered before taking on homeschool, though, was how we would decide which days to take off completely. I think I originally planned to follow the public school schedule. We took off Labor Day and I lightened the school work for the week (taking the number of Honeybun’s required weekly tasks from 10 down to 8). But then Rosh Hashana came, we started school and we were nearly done before I remembered that it was a “no school” day.
Then we get to today: Columbus Day. Government offices like the post office are closed as are banks but our local public schools are open. So is it a school day or not a school day?
The decision for today and the rest of the year actually came quite easily once I really thought about it: we will just follow hubby’s work schedule. He is off today so it’s a no school day.
I can’t justify doing a full day of school work when daddy is home and we could better spend our time doing something fun. Plus the girls deserve a nice three day weekend after all the hard work they’ve done this year.
It’s also a lot easier to keep track of hubby’s schedule then to try to remember arbitrary days off the public schools take and the days off will be a lot more meaningful since daddy will be around to share them with us. No arbitrary days off, no random half Thursdays. Every day we take off will be for a reason.
It doesn’t mean that we don’t have “easy” days. There have been plenty of days where we don’t do much more than play or get errands done, but we make up for it another day in the week.
By taking off hubby’s off days it will also be more predictable for the girls to know when they do and do not have to do school on any given day.
