Guide

Planning a homeschool year with terms and breaks

A school year plan is a calendar and a count: the first and last day, the days you teach each week, the breaks, and the number of school days that leaves. Get those four right and the subjects fit inside.

In short

Choose a start and end date, decide which weekdays you teach, mark breaks and holidays, and count the school days that remain. If your state publishes a required number, plan ten or so days above it for sick days. Split the year into terms if you want report cards or checkpoints.

Start from the number of days

Thirty-six weeks of five school days is 180 days; forty-five weeks of four days is also 180. Work backward from the number you want or need: decide how many days a week you teach, divide, and you have the number of weeks. Then add a margin. Children get sick, cars break down, grandparents visit. A plan with no slack is a plan you will be behind on by November.

Requirements vary by state and by the option a family files under: some states publish a number of days or hours, some ask for a portfolio, an evaluation or test scores, and others set different rules or none for homeschools.

Published figures by state

Common year shapes

Traditional: late August or September to May or June, with breaks at Thanksgiving, the winter holidays and spring.
Year-round: school most of the year at a lighter pace, with shorter breaks spread out.
Sabbath schedule: six weeks on, one week off, repeated. The week off is for rest, catch-up and planning the next six weeks.
Four-day week: four teaching days and a fifth day for co-op, field trips or catching up.

Terms

Terms give the year checkpoints: a moment to look at each child's progress, adjust the plan, and, if you give grades, close a report card. Two semesters, three trimesters or four quarters all work. Choose by how often you want to stop and look, not by what a school does.

Then fit the subjects

Compare the lessons in each curriculum with the days the subject will meet. A math book with 160 lessons and five meetings a week fits a 180-day year with room to spare; a science book with 36 chapters needs a chapter a week. Where it does not fit, change the rhythm (more meetings, or two lessons on some days) or accept finishing in the next year.

How Homeschool Up keeps the plan

Set the school year's dates and teaching weekdays, then add terms and breaks. A break can be for the whole family or for named children.
Each subject meets on chosen weekdays, a number of times a week, in a loop, or on fixed class dates.
Lessons are handed out in order on meeting days, and a subject that will run out of meeting days before its lessons gets a pace warning.
The report card follows your terms; with no terms, it covers the whole year.
When the year ends, start the next one from the old one.

Questions people ask

How many days is a homeschool year?

There is no single answer. Where a state publishes a number it is often around 180 days or a number of hours; others set none. Check your state's official page.

Should I plan every lesson in advance?

Plan the order and the rhythm, not the dates. If the order is right, the date each lesson lands on can move without anything being lost.

Is this legal advice?

No. This guide describes common record-keeping practice. For what your state requires, read your state's official page; Homeschool Up's state requirements page links to it with the date we checked it.

Set the year once

Dates, terms, breaks and the days you teach. Every lesson lands on a school day after that. 15-day free trial on every plan.

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