I always love hearing how other people spend their days, and given how many “Day In The Life” blog posts and Youtube videos there are, I know I’m not alone. It can be so helpful to gain perspective and ideas for our own days by observing other people. This post is not a day in the life, but I will share some of the school-year schedules that have worked for us over the years.
Breaking it into Terms
Years ago, as I slogged through a long portion of the semester between breaks, I decided to try something new. As the teacher I can give my kids time off whenever I want, but I wanted something a bit more structured. I didn’t want a habit of too many days off or having a haphazard school year.
I decided to do what I’d heard some charter schools do. I would break up our semester into terms: six weeks of school, then one week off. This allowed us to work hard for those weeks, knowing that we weren’t at the mercy of holidays for a break. It gave the kids something to look forward to, and honestly, I looked forward to it as well. I enjoy homeschooling, but knowing I have a recharge week coming on a regular basis has been immensely helpful.
While my ultimate goal is six weeks on, one week off, the fall semester already has Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I do a bit of finagling with the calendar that semester.
Here’s an example of how we did this in the fall of 2025:
Soft start: We got our feet wet with school the first week of September since we had a trip planned for the following week. Then September 8-12 was a week off.
Seven weeks on: September 15 through the week of October 20, we had school.
One week off: October 27th through 31st was off.
Seven weeks on: Then we had school November 3 through December 19th, with just two days off for Thanksgiving.
Two weeks off: We take two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s.
After Christmas, it still has flexibility, but it’s much more often the six weeks on, one week off schedule. This has been absolutely worthwhile for us, especially in the spring semester with so few holidays to make a natural break.
I know some states have more strict guidelines for homeschoolers, and in that case, you might have to get even more strategic about your breaks. Maybe six weeks of school followed by a 3-day school week. Whatever helps give you something to look forward to, a reprieve from routine in those longer spring months to help you get the rest you need along the way.
Variety Within the Terms:
During the terms we just talked about, I’ve also experimented with doing various subject emphases. For instance, for a middle schooler, the first term of the school year they might do a few of what I consider baseline subjects plus rhetoric and history, and the next term the baseline subjects plus grammar and science. Then we simply switch between those two term schedules.
This way, they could dig more deeply into history or science because they’re doing it each day instead of twice a week history and twice a week science.
Example:
Term 1: Term 2:
Math Math
Spelling Spelling
Music Music
Grammar Rhetoric
Science History
Personally, I liked that it gave some variety to our subjects, gave a chance to get more immersed into a topic, and we still made progress in every subject throughout the course of the year.
Intensives:
This takes what we just talked about one step further. We have also experimented with doing intensives for some subjects. This was inspired by colleges who offer their semester-long courses, but then a 2-week course during winter or summer break. Since it’s not the only subject my kids are doing, it’s not finished in two weeks. We minimize the other subjects, then we ramp up the amount of time spent on the intensive subject, so instead of maybe 1 hour for Literature for my high schooler, he’ll take 2-2.5 hours on it while doing fewer other subjects.
This may or may not change how many subjects are finished in a school year, it’s just an experiment to see what their preferences are. Some people (myself very much included) are more motivated to work hard at a subject knowing they can get that sense of completion and accomplishment in 2 months instead of 9. So it depends on what lights the fire in your children to do the work well.
A friend of mine who was homeschooled said that in her last few years of high school, her mom said she could choose how she wanted to do it. If she wanted to do only science all day every day until it was done, go for it. Then move on to the next subject. That’s part of the joy of homeschooling – we can get so creative with how we learn, and give the kids a chance to learn how they learn best as they get older.
Summer School:
For three or four years, we’ve been doing school through the summer months. Usually we take two weeks off completely in June and in August, which helps bookend the summer, but then we do school during the remaining weeks.
This is a much more laid-back schedule. Most often the subjects have been math, spelling, and music, because those are incremental skills that can so easily be lost when kids take months off at a time. Now my high schooler will be able to earn 1-2 credits during the summer months as well since we have decided to accelerate high school.
A hidden bonus with doing a bit of school during the summer: it adds a little structure to our day. During the weeks of no school whatsoever, the days feel longer and my kids will complain of boredom much more. But the days we’ve done maybe an hour of school in the morning as part of a routine, I don’t hear those complaints.
A Mindset Shift
I think we often get things backward in this life. We tend to serve things that are supposed to serve us – if we bought a textbook, then we need to complete every single page. If we are going to teach our kids, we have to do it just like the public schools do.
But homeschool should be a feast of knowledge laid out before our kids, to help prepare them for a full life ahead. We don’t need to serve a school schedule that was set up by people trying to get a certain number of days to fulfill a mandatory quota. Even if you’re in a state that’s more strict on counting your days, here’s your permission to get as creative as you can and use school as a tool to serve your family. No slacking off, just being strategic and working with our natural rhythms, motivators, and energy levels so we can give this our best effort.
Did I miss anything? How do you structure your school year to help it serve your family?
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