Year-Round Homeschooling: Pros and Cons
Most homeschoolers that I know tend to approximately follow the public school schedule. However, you may find that you don't like taking such long summer breaks. If you don't, you may want to consider doing school year-round instead of following the "usual" schedule. What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Pros: First of all, and probably most importantly, you don't get the loss of learning retention that is so often a problem after taking a long summer break. Any school teacher can tell you what a problem this often is — this is why, in many classes, a month or so of review is necessary before new material can be attacked. The children have, quite simply, forgotten large chunks of what they knew back on May 1st. This is usually the main argument for a year-round public school schedule, as well.
Secondly, it can lead to a more flexible schedule for the year in full. If you need to take a week or two off for vacation, you can do that because you're not tied to a particular schedule for the year. Illnesses won't throw you as far behind. And you can schedule several week-or-longer breaks throughout the year that will give you the respite you need without getting too badly out of the habits of school days.
Third, some children — and let's face it, some adults — do better with a consistent schedule. A long summer break can have one or more persons in the household tearing out their hair from boredom after a while. Sticking to your normal school schedule most of the time may work better for some people. In addition, it's a lot easier to get back into the swing of things after a two-week break than a three-month break even if you're not a person who thrives on consistency.
Cons: While the cons of year-round homeschooling aren't very bad, they should be considered. The biggest problem I can think of is trying to deal with other people not being off for the summer, and the possible envy problems that might arise in your own children. If there are children in the neighborhood, this could especially be a problem. Your own children might feel jealous that they are inside doing homework while their friends are out enjoying the day. The neighborhood children may not respect or understand your family rules and want to be bothering you at school times to "come play!" (A tip I read for this is to place a sign of some kind on the front door during school times for the neighborhood children. Then they know if it's okay to knock or not.)
Another thing to consider, if you use a standard, boxed curriculum and follow it pretty faithfully, is that they are generally constructed with a nine month schedule in mind. You will need to do a little tweaking here and there to make it stretch for the year, perhaps filling in with additional materials here and there. When I used the Alpha Omega Life Pacs a few years ago, we would take a one week break after completing Book 1 in each subject, Book 2, etc. This was easy with their curriculum as the subjects are broken up into ten individual books, but not every curriculum works that way.
A third thing to consider is outside activities. Many of the things that you enjoyed during the regular school year will not be available during the summer, and depending on where you live, there may or may not be activities to replace them. Our homeschool book club will not be meeting during the summer, so that's out for us. Where we live, it's too hot to get together much during the summer for park days unless we go out really early or really late. Few groups try to schedule field trips because so many people are either gone on vacation, or are not interested because it's not "school time". This means that if you want to do school-ish activities, you'll pretty much have to do them yourself. However, many communities have tons of activities available that only happen during the summer that you can participate in.
These are just some of the things to consider when thinking about switching to year-round homeschooling. The dynamics of your own family may involve other pros and cons. And there is no one single way to year-round homeschool. You may choose to complete the regular school year with a regular curriculum, then fill the summer with things that are only available during the summer — short-term classes in everything ranging from archery to zoology, summer camps, vacation Bible schools and more. Or perhaps you might go to a reduced academic load, focusing only on the subjects that are either the most loved, or the most problematic. The beauty of homeschooling is that you can make it work for your family — there are no right or wrong answers beyond whatever requirements are placed on you from your state or your cover school. Your family and children get to come first — and you can decide based on that.
