 Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallach Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be all about homeschooling year-round. Let's talk about some of the pros and the cons. But before we talk about the pros and the cons, let's talk about what homeschooling year-round is because if you're new to homeschooling, you may be like, what is this term? Homeschooling year-round is really simple. It just means that you are going to not take a traditional school schedule of homeschooling August through May and taking that big month of time off in the summer. It doesn't mean that you're not gonna have time off and we will talk about that in the pros and the cons, but it just means you're not going to follow that traditional school schedule and instead you're gonna homeschool through the summer or through most of the summer and basically homeschool year-round. You're gonna homeschool more through the year, but it doesn't mean you're going to homeschool more in general, because you're still gonna get those breaks. Now, we have homeschooled the traditional way and we have homeschooled year-round. So I feel like I can really tell you some of the pros and the cons of both so that you can make an informed decision of what will be best for your homeschool. So let's start with the pros of homeschooling year-round. The number one pro for homeschooling year-round for me is that there is no summer learning loss. Did you know that most traditional school children lose two and a half months of learning during the summer when they take that time off? That is why if you were in public school, you won't remember spending so many months when you went back to school the next year reviewing the topics from the previous year because chances are the majority of the kids lost it. I don't know about you, but as a homeschool mom, I want to be efficient and to manage my time as best as possible because there's not enough of it. So why would I want to spend two and a half months reteaching something that I've already taught? I don't. So that is the number one pro for homeschooling year-round is that doesn't have to happen. It doesn't mean you have to be introducing new concepts all summer long. It just means you have to not be doing the ones that you've already done. So we just can do review during the summer. You can just review the things that you've already done. You can just keep using the things that you've already taught. Homeschooling year-round means that the chances are they're not gonna have what is commonly referred to as the summer slide. Homeschooling year-round pro number two is that you get to keep the routine. So I don't know about your kids, but my kid thrives on having a rhythm and a routine. We do not have a schedule here in our house. I don't do a whole hour-by-hour thing, but we kind of have a general flow to our day. We wake up, we do this next and this and then next. And if we don't have that, it just stresses us all out, all of us. Because it's like, it just feels like you're juggling. You don't know what to do next, what's coming next, what's happening next. You're gonna miss appointments. It just feels like everything is off. So homeschooling year-round gives you the ability to just kind of keep going with the flow, keeping that routine and that rhythm. You don't have to worry about trying to come back to it once you've taken those months off because coming back to a routine after a prolonged break is a nightmare. Homeschooling year-round pro number three is that you can take lots of breaks. All right, here it is. I told you that it didn't necessarily mean that you were gonna homeschool more and it doesn't. When you're homeschooling year-round, when you say there are 365 days in the school year instead of that traditional 180, you're basically doubling the amount of time that you can school, which means that you can take breaks whenever you want. You have a kid's day, okay, take a break. You aren't feeling it today, okay, take a break. You wanna go on vacation in February when everybody else is in school and prices are cheaper and everything's dead? Absolutely. In our homeschool for the past few years, we actually learned that the holidays were really stressful when we added homeschooling into it because you've got so many things going on and so many commitments to family and holiday events and it's just too much. We have actually always taken off from Thanksgiving until January, at least in the past three or four years because it just makes my life more just easier. Like, hands down, it is so much easier. So we just take kind of what would be a big portion of our summer around the holidays. Does that mean we do nothing? Nope, it absolutely does not, but it does mean that I don't stress about it at all. Like, I don't stress period. It also means that when the holidays are over, we can ease back into homeschooling and have a much more relaxed summer and a relaxed return from the holidays because I don't have to worry about teaching all of the things in that 180 day calendar. Instead, I have 365 days. So you can take the breaks you want, you can go as relaxed as you want, it just makes it a lot easier. Homeschooling year-round pro number four is that it really does help you create a culture of learning in your home and in your family. When you are homeschooling with that traditional schedule and you're taking two and a half months off and you're just like, okay, we're not doing school, you're really kind of creating that mindset that school is something to be done. School is something that is done from this date from this time to this time. And when you're not in those dates in those times, you are not schooling. And there is absolutely no problem with that. But if you're somebody who wants to create that culture of learning, that lifestyle of learning, where you are just learning as part of what your life is when you really wanna create those lifelong learners, homeschooling year-round helps you do that because it is just something that you're doing every day, all day, every day, and there isn't starts and stops to it. You're just learning together. So there you have it. Those are the pros to homeschooling year-round. But now let's talk about the cons because there are a few. Homeschooling year-round con number one and the biggest in my personal opinion is that it means there is no break for the homeschool mom. Now, when you are homeschooling with that typical August to May schedule and you're taking two and a half months off or three months off in the summer, as a homeschool mom, you get a break. Not as a mom because listen, you guys, we never get a break. But as a homeschool mom, you get a break. You're not having to teach new concepts. You're not having to plan the homeschool days. You can just turn your homeschool mind off or you can use that two and a half months to plan and really be ready for the year that's coming up in August, right? So you can kind of use that time to your benefit to set your homeschool year up for success. You can use that time for professional development to become a better homeschool mom. You can use that time to turn your brain off and do nothing. But if you're homeschooling year-round, you don't always get that. Now, there are some ways around it. There are some other schedules like a Sabbath schedule where you would homeschool six weeks on and one week off and you could take that one week off to do household stuff or planning or turn your brain off. Again, with year-round, you can take breaks when you need it, but those breaks are typically smaller, less time. So you're just not getting that big chunk of time off in the summer to maybe do a household renovation or to do something for yourself or whatever it may be that you would typically wanna do with that big chunk of time. It's not happening if you're homeschooling year-round. And in my opinion, that's probably the biggest con. Homeschooling year-round con at number two is that there could potentially be scheduling conflicts. So if you live in a neighborhood with a lot of kids and they're off during the summer and they're wanting to schedule all of their play dates during those summer months, if you're still schooling, it can make it difficult to, number one, keep your kids' attention because they're wanting to go outside and play with all the kids outside, but also to schedule things. Also, there are a ton of amazing camps that only happen during the summer months. And so maybe you can't homeschool year-round because your kid is doing this special summer camp. It makes it difficult. Keep in mind that some of those summer camps are educational, so they could still be counting towards school if you're schooling year-round. And so you can get flexible with that later once you've decided which schedule is best for you, but it can make scheduling difficult, especially if, let's say, for example, your sister or your aunt or your mom or somebody as a teacher and they're wanting to schedule their vacations in the summer because that's the only time off they have and you wanna spend time with them. It just makes it a little more difficult to kind of schedule all of that out. Again, schooling year-round doesn't necessarily mean that you can't take the time off, but you're just not gonna get, again, that big chunk of time that's gonna be that two and a half months to go, maybe do a prolonged trip with your teacher friends or for your kids to play with their public school friends outside. So you kinda have to weigh that, like what do I want to do during the summer that maybe I can't do during the traditional school year because school is out and does that mean we need to take school off so that we can do those things. Homeschooling year-round, con number three, is there could be added cost. When you're homeschooling year-round, it means that you may need supplies in February when they're not on sale for the back-to-school sales. Now, you could always try to stock up at the back-to-school sales, but you may not always know what you need, especially if you're just starting out homeschooling year-round. You're gonna have no clue how many crayons you're gonna go through or how many markers or glue sticks. So you may not have enough, which means that you're gonna have to pay closer to full price, so you're not gonna have as much savings. It also means that you're probably gonna be homeschooling more than the typical 180 days, so you may need more materials for teaching your child. You may need more books for them to read or you may decide the homeschooling year-round means that you're going to finish this curriculum and you're gonna go ahead and start the other one, which may be a little sooner than what you would have started were you taking a full two and a half months off in the summer years. It also means that you may be starting that curriculum, again, in March and not in August, which means maybe you can't take advantage of those back-to-school sales from the curriculum suppliers. So potentially it could be an added cost. Does it have to be an added cost? No, because once you start doing it, you can find ways around that so that you are shopping and you will learn how much you need or how much you don't need. You can buy used. I mean, there are ways to combat it, but it could potentially be an added cost homeschool year-round versus that traditional schedule. So if you are new here at the Waldoch Way, maybe you don't know, but we actually do homeschool year-round. That is what works best for us. It is what we have been doing for about the last three to four years. We tried the regular school schedule. I did not like the summer learning loss. I did not like the lack of routine. The added cost does not sway us at all. And while occasionally the scheduling conflict and the no breaks for mom are a little annoying, I have found ways to work around it. So like I said before, when there is a summer camp, we count that as part of our school. As far as the breaks for me, I take them when I need them. If I need a break in the middle of February, I will just take it straight up with no guilt because I don't get that two and a half months off during the summer. So I allow myself grace to take a week off in February because I have hit a wall and I need it or to take the holidays off because that's when I need it or to take a week off to go on vacation. So I have found ways around a lot of the cons, but again, I've been doing it for a few years. And sometimes you have to just do it to figure out what the cons are for you personally and then find ways around them if the homeschooling year round is something that you really wanna do and you think it is probably best overall, you will definitely find tips to make it work. And so on that note, I would absolutely love it if you would first tell me down in the comments, which schedule do you do? Do you homeschool year round? Do you follow the traditional schedule or do you do something completely different and then leave one or two tips for that schedule so that people that are looking to do it will have some tips to help them get started.