My kids LOVE snow days! I usually allow them 3 snow days a year because I don’t want to do school in the summer. A lot of their friends go to public school so they always know when they get a snow day. I remember that feeling of having a snow day and not having school so that’s why I allow 3 days. What do you all do about snow days? Do you give them or not?
And what do you do about spring break? Some years we have them and some years we don’t. I feel like it’s a waste because we never go anywhere. Our vacations are always in the summer. And usually the weather isn’t very nice anyway.
We don’t really do a fall break and a spring break like the public schools do. Usually, during those weeks I do usually take a day off and make our school work a little lighter so we are done earlier but only because our neighbors are home and what to know if my daughter can go out and play. I like for her to have those opportunities so we adjust, but we don’t plan to take a full fall/spring break. As for snow days, usually my daughter doesn’t know when the Public School kids have snow days, so we just stick to our schedule… IF, we do have a lot of snow and its actually warm enough to play in the snow, I will call a snow day and we will enjoy the weather! But, like you, I’d rather have warmer days off to be outside and enjoy the summer so we don’t take too many days off during our school year. (We do take a few weeks off around Christmas as we travel to see different family members, prepare for traditions, etc.)
We don’t follow the public school calendar per se, but we may alter our schedule some for Fall and Spring breaks to allow for playdates and other activities with our public school friends. I also like to break our learning into sections - 6-8 week periods and then a couple of days to a week off - this usually coincides with family trips and such. We try to use any of our outings as learning experiences. 
As for snow/inclement weather or parent/teacher conference days, we don’t observe those, nor do we intend to add days to our calendar to compensate for testing like our local school want to do.
We do take a week long break for Thanksgiving, almost a month at Christmas, and summer time.
We are starting in the Fall. I have already planed out our school days. We are taking a week at Thanksgiving, 2 weeks at Christmas, and a late spring break. I told them that we would not do snow days, no point here, better to get our work in and done. We are planning to do school only 4 days a week and have the 5th for volunteer work, Meetings at church, and field trips. Also, planning 2 over night camping trips.
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We do a week for Spring break and a week for Winter recess just like our school district does. My kids have friends that go to public school and they have play dates when they have vacations. Also, my mom works for the school district! So, the kids like to spend time with grandma when she has time off too. I gave one snow day this year when the kids begged! We have a lot of 2 hour delays here and I always honor the delays and let the kids play and start school late on those days. I agree with you, and I remember feeling excited as a kid to get snow days!
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I am not going to give snow days that way I know that my children will have summer break, but I do allow Christmas break and spring break… 2 weeks for Christmas and 1 week for spring break… That is how I have it set up right now.
Since we have a public school teacher in the house (dad) we will take snow days (or snow half days!) when he is home. We love winter sports so this allows us time outside with great skiing and skating conditions. As far as spring break goes, we typically do something and I can generally at least credit one or two days of field trips in on the week, unless I am behind on days, which so far hasn’t happened. But we do enjoy our summer, so I try to be finished by the end of the first week of June. 
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When we start homeschooling I want to stick to the public school calendar just because we have lots of friends in the public school. But I’m very sure we’ll tweak it here and there 
And I plan to use Fridays as our “Real Life” learning time Learning while running errands (bank, grocery store, Costco…seriously, those carts get pretty darn heavy, it can be P.E. day too right there ;), creating grocery list and menu for following week, filling gas tank, balancing check book, etc.!!
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We don’t do week long breaks like public school, but I do allow “snow days” or we have been know to take off a day just because it is a beautiful day out. Sometimes we also have a “Lego day”. Kids learn a lot through play as well as academics!
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We do abbreviated snow days - meaning we get some of the “important” things done - we skip the extras and make them up later, this way we don’t get too far behind and end up in “summer school”, but the kids also get to enjoy the snow. We do have Spring break - if for no other reason just to have some lazy time where we can come back fresh and ready to finish up the year. Kids look forward to it, and so do I.
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Definitely. Life needs to be a little spontaneous. We usually have a couple a snow days. And we plan our schedule around my husband college schedule so we can spend his days off with him. So we do take spring and fall breaks as well as holidays
My husband is a public school teacher so we take some of the same breaks that he gets. However he starts after Labor Day and will go to the end of June with school this year and we don’t want to do that so we don’t follow his schedule exactly. We do take most of the same three day weekends that he gets.
With snow days normally we don’t take them, we took only one (of the my husband had five!) this school year. And that was because I actually wasn’t feeling well that day either. But my kids are young and if we start school at a reasonable time (before 9) they are done by noon, sometimes ever earlier, and can play all afternoon.
February break we took 2 days and did schoolwork on the other three. The kids went with their dad to visit his family because the cousins were on break then. In April we will do normal schoolwork three days again and do field trip type activities the other two days. But we are taking a vacation in May and will be taking five days off of school that the kids do not know about.
Right now we are scheduled to hit our 180th day by the second week of June. At that point the kids are not going to want to be cooped up indoors when we could be out and playing so it should work out well. I do plan to school through the summer a few days a week using units, notebooking and FIAR as a guide. It will be relaxed but keep some of the routine of schoolwork. My husband is teaching summer school so it makes sense to keep up our routine as well. Two days a week I will have them do math practice and they will read 10-15 minutes a day so that when we start the new curriculum in the fall we can hit the ground running instead of doing tons of review.
We don’t do snow days, but we do do spring break. Usually I am the one who needs a spring break LOL! We never go anywhere (we’ve never gone on vacation ever), but we just take a break from school and, more often than not, use our days off for dentist and doctor appointments LOL! I have high schoolers who are involved in AWANA, and they go to Summit every year. So we schedule our spring break while they are gone.
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We just finished Spring Break. My hubs is a teacher and he is off for the week…so we have fun.
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We are taking next week off for spring break! We took 1 or 2 snow days. We had a LOT of snow this year, te public schools closed about 8-10 times.
Our church’s children’s ministry tends to plan day time events for when the school system is on fall, winter, and spring breaks, so I know we will take days off to attend those, but otherwise, I am planning to take it as it goes. If we need a break, we will take one as needed. I do plan on us taking a longer break, probably two or three weeks, in December.
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We don’t do snow days because we live in Florida. We did do Spring Break. Next year I’m planning to do 6 weeks on/one week off with a longer break in December and all of June off (we have 3 June birthdays and one Dec birthday so that works out well for us). In the past we’ve followed the school schedule but I want to go our own route next year.
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