Is Homeschooling Year-Round Right For You?

Homeschooling year-round has become more popular in the homeschool community. Though there are always a handful of people, whether they homeschool or not, that think homeschooling year-round sounds just terrible and is robbing children of a summer break, I am here to share how we homeschool year-round and why we love it. You may be surprised to find yourself homeschooling year-round yourself, so read on to see if homeschooling year-round is right for you and your family.

After our very first year we had a full homeschool year (2020/2021 school year) we took the Summer completely off. My son and I were honestly excited to put away the books and spend every waking minute outdoors. We lived in Montana then, and Summers there are incredibly short but absolutely magical. You never want to miss a moment! Plus, I had a baby in August of 2021, so all lessons were put on hold and we had a late start to our new school year. So our Summer break ends, and our next year of school starts…. and it was less than enjoyable. Everything that we had learned in math, was gone. He could not remember a single thing we had mastered, and had to start all over. He also wasn’t as comfortable reading aloud anymore, and I realized that we had a summer with absolutely no rhythm to our days, not even a tiny bit of structure, and it actually was hurting our daily family life. Getting back into the routine of homeschooling that Fall was rough. It took us weeks to get back into the flow of things. Plus, we had a new baby, so everything we did before, had changed. We had a lovely school year, but I knew that we would have to do some school over the summer months to keep things going.

Then the next Spring, in 2022, we sold our house and moved a couple hours away. Then a few months later, we sell half our belongings and move straight across the country from Montana to North Carolina. Then a few months later, we moved to Virginia! I know, crazy. Homeschooling was impossible to keep up with! We had taken so many days “off” to move all those times, I felt like we just had to school over the Summer again. We kept doing some schooling through that next Summer until I had another baby in July, and then we took off a couple months to focus on the baby.

Having babies, traveling, moving… all these things are hard enough. Add in homeschool lessons, and my brain was just fried. If we school year-round, we have that flexibility to take off days throughout the school year, for whatever reason. We take a lot of trips to visit family throughout the school year, and we don’t have to worry about missing days. I also try not to stress if we don’t get it all done by the end of the year. Your history unit taking longer than expected? Just keep it going ! Didn’t get through that read-aloud by the end of the “school year”? Just keep reading it. A lot of families chose to homeschool because of the flexibility. You get to chose when your school year starts or stops, or if it just keeps going. We are required to have 180 instructional day in a year, but you can choose which days those will be! I want my children to understand that learning is a life-long thing. It doesn’t just happen during a school year. I also count a lot of things as “school”, even if it doesn’t look like traditional book work.

Schooling year-round also takes a bit of pressure off me because I don’t have to “fit” it all in within one school year. We spent months learning about the civil war this year, and then took a break from American history to work on the history lessons that come with our unit studies. (We are working through a really cool homesteading unit right now and learned about the history of the wheelbarrow, how technology has changed farming, and about different important inventors that made farming easier… ) I figured if my son wanted to keep learning about early American history, we could keep working our way through over the Summer and then continue on in the Fall for 6th grade.

So what do you do over those Summer months ?

You can do whatever you want! That’s the beauty of it. That’s the beauty of homeschooling. Creating or continuing a daily rhythm for Summer is so beneficial for you and your whole family. My boys are all creatures of habit. They like a little structure and to know how each day will go and what is expected of them. Now, every single day for us is different, but most early mornings are the same. So that’s when we will do our lessons most days and keep our morning rhythm going throughout the Summer. I like to keep my afternoons open because I want to be able to say yes to the beach, the park, bike rides etc. Some days we do those things in the morning before the heat of the day, but we can still usually get most of our morning routine done before leaving the house. Whatever we don’t finish, we will do in the late afternoon when we get back home.

Schooling through the Summer months also is a great opportunity to work on different math concepts a child hasn’t quite mastered. Or helping your child gain confidence in their reading comprehension. Strengthen and broaden their vocabulary…. and review everything you learned that year.

Our Daily Rhythm

6:15/6:30– mama and baby wakes up and goes downstairs. I make a pot coffee, let the dog out, and take baby with me to let out the ducks, rabbit, chickens, and chicks. I water my flowers around the house and then head back inside. By this time, my 2.5 year old may be awake and downstairs.

7:00- I nurse baby and read my bible (I am doing the bible in a year with Bible Recap) and drink some coffee. This is usually interrupted by my toddler coming down if he’s not already down here. I either turn on the tv, pull out some special toys like Magna-Tiles or blocks, or pull out watercolors or Water Wows for him to keep him occupied until I’m done reading and listening to the podcast episode.

7:30-I start making breakfast. I do make larger breakfasts most days. We have chickens and ducks so are swimming in eggs. I will make eggs, sausage or bacon, and toast. Sometimes pancakes, waffles, or french toast. And any fresh fruit we have. If we have an appointment in the morning, cereal, yogurt with granola, or bagels with peanut butter are our go-tos.

7:45/8:00- I go wake up my 11 year old (for the first time- it takes awhile). He will mosey on down half asleep after I have yelled up that breakfast is ready at least three times. (preteens! haha) By this time I am usually done eating and so are the littles, so it’s just my oldest that is left to eat. While he eats, I start with our devotional. We are currently reading through How Great Is Our God: 100 Indescribable Devotions About God and Science. We are not currently doing an artist study, but when we do, it’s during this time as well.

8:15/8:30– Then while I am cleaning up from breakfast, my 11 year old does a page in his Kids Devotional Doodle Journal. My toddler and babe are usually playing in the living room or wanting mama. My oldest then starts on his lessons on Mia Academy. This is something new for us, we have only been doing it for about a month, and are really loving it so far! I will leave a full review on the blog after we have used it for at least 6 months. He always starts Mia Academy with his Bible study lessons, so it all flows together. Then he works on any other lessons he has. For the Summer, I am going to have math 2 or 3 days a week, bibles lessons every day, and physical education twice a week. He also has an art class once a week through Mia Academy and on Monday mornings he has a live art class via Outschool that he really loves. I don’t think we will do their language arts lessons, but we might just a couple days a week.

9:00- I nurse the baby again and put him down for a nap. My baby will only nap during the day in the car or in a stroller, and preferably outside in the stroller. I walk him up and down our big wrap around porch and he loves to nap out there.

During the baby’s nap time I like to get our lessons done that we don’t do on Mia Academy. My son will finish up whatever lesson he is on and then we will work together, taking advantage of the baby sleeping. Then I just have to entertain one toddler. Right now we have a loop schedule. So Monday’s is geography, Tuesdays is art and music, Wednesday is science, Thursday is history, and Friday is nature study. We use Harbor and Sprout themed units for these lessons. I incorporate books, videos, and art projects to go with these monthly themes. In the Summer, I don’t think we will be doing all our loop subjects. We will just do the “fun” stuff, plus a couple days a week of math. So if we are skipping those lessons in the Summer, we will get done a lot faster in the mornings. I randomly add in poetry and cursive copywork throughout the week. I like to find worksheets that are seasonal or line up with our unit study.

10:00/10:30- Baby is usually waking up from his nap around now, then we head out to the porch and I read a chapter from our read-aloud if we’re not going anywhere in the morning. My oldest will finish up any Mia Academy lessons he needs to do while I get ready for the day and get my toddler dressed. (to be transparent, some days he stays in just a diaper all day long and I stay in my pjs all day long!)

11:00- we will head outside and play until everyone is nice and hungry and I will make a quick lunch. We love to take our lunch outside, so if it’s not too hot, we will do that.

1:00- Baby goes down for a nap and I do chores. Laundry, dishes, vacuuming, mopping, meal planning, cleaning duck houses and chicken coops …. whatever needs to be done that day.

Free play for the rest of the day until I start making dinner around 5:00/5:30. This is usually the hardest part of my day. My oldest is off playing video games or playing with Legos, my two littles are going absolutely wild- my toddler gets a crazy burst of energy around this time and my baby is whiney and wants to be held. My husband is usually doing yardwork (we have 22 acres, so there is a lot to maintain here) And I am on my own trying to make dinner with two kids that are losing their minds. Once dinner is on the table, everyone is back to their calm selves. Whew! I made it.

Some days I have physical therapy, some days chiropractic care, some days grocery pickup orders and other errands to run. Some days I have campaign deadlines for Instagram and need to work on creating content, or we wake up and are just all cranky and I know its either a baking and tea and books day, or a play in the woods all day long kind of day. I think what is important to remember if you decide to school through the Summer, is that your daily rhythm can be flexible. Don’t stress if you aren’t checking off those mental boxes of what you thought your day was going to be. It’s wonderful to have a plan for the day or for the week, but if you are stressing out because you didn’t get it all done, try to write that mental (or physical) list shorter tomorrow. Do less. Do the minimum if you want. In the Summer, if my son reads at least 25 minutes, we did our devotionals, and he did something creative, I count it as a good and productive school day. If we didn’t get to math because we were busy having fun, I try not to stress.

And don’t forget those life skills counting as valuable lessons! If your children are helping you in the garden, in the kitchen, learning how to fish, or cook over an open fire, or mow the lawn… for me, those count as school, too! When people ask what kind of homeschoolers we are, I usually say “eclectic” because we just don’t fall under one style. I appreciate living books, nature and art study from Charlotte Mason, Celebrating the seasons like in Waldorf, a bit of Unschooling because I believe lessons like baking, grocery shopping, outdoor survival skills, etc. all fall under schooling. And I would say we’re a bit “Wild+Free”, even though that’s technically not a homeschooling method. But we resonate with this organization.

Our Summer learning plan:

Mondays- Outschool.com sketching class

Tuesdays and Thursdays- math on Mia Academy

Wednesdays- handwriting

Fridays- nature study

Every day: Our devotionals, bible lessons on Mia Academy, independent reading, chapter of our read-aloud

We will have one whole week in June off for a trip to Illinois to see family, a week that my son will be at Boy Scout camp, and we will have plenty of days over the Summer where we will be taking breaks from lessons. This is what works for us right now, and that may change in the future. But I really do enjoy the flexibility of this schedule.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to see if homeschooling year-round may be right for you and your family:

1. Do you have any big life changes happening this year, like having a baby or moving, that would require a lot of your attention and missing a lot of school days?
2. Do your kids thrive with a daily routine/schedule/rhythm?
3. Would your family benefit from having a 4 day school week? Or maybe schooling 6 weeks on then two weeks off? You don’t have to school the traditional Monday through Friday.
4. Does your child forget what they have learned over a long summer break? That summer slide is real!
5. Do you want a more relaxed approach to homeschooling?
6. Do deadlines stress you and your kids out? Without an official start and end date of school, you won’t feel the pressure to cram it all in.
7. Would you rather have your breaks when the weather is nice? Maybe Summer is crazy hot where you are, so you end up inside enjoying the A/C more than you’d like. Here in Virginia, late Autumn and Spring has the most gorgeous weather. We can spend those days outside playing instead of doing lessons. Maybe you live in a ski town, and hitting the slops all winter takes priority.
8. Do you have that February burnout every year? I hear from so many homeschool mamas that they are just over it around this time. I usually feel like this end of February. Homeschooling year-round allows you to take off as much time as you want during a mid-year slump.

So what do you think ? Is homeschooling year-round right for you?