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My bff  Sarah, aka, livingmydream on here, told me about an article she read in the Home Educating Family Magazine titled "Sabbath Schooling". It sounded interesting, and I get that wonderful mag, so I read the article and I am sold!

The idea is that the Sabbath is celebrated on the 7th day, when God rested. So often us homeschoolers get burned out easily. The concept is to school for 6 weeks and then take a week off, which is called the "Sabbath Week" a week of rest and catching up on things that get pushed off to the side - OK, that doesn't sound like rest...lol!

Anyway, if you do 6 weeks on 1 week off you still have a total of 10 weeks you can take off throughout the year. We are going to do the 6/1 and take 4 weeks off in December and 6 weeks off in the summer.

I will "schedule" spring break on the closest week off time.

Does anyone do this? What do you all think???

You can go here and scroll to the bottom and "flip through" to find the article. You can right click to zoom in so you can read it!
http://www.wellplannedday.com/current.html

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I love that! Thanks for posting! I have been looking for the "right" year round schedule for a while, and have been tossing things around in my head. That is perfect.

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I was reading that and thought it was a cool idea, too!

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Still need to mull the idea over with my husband, but I think we will do the same. Instead of taking 4 weeks off in December we will take one or two and take 4 weeks off when baby comes in Feb.!!! I think it will work out great. Love using the 6th week to do dentist appts, things like that that I never seem able to do!

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interesting. I think I need to pray about this...

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Loving this idea and tossing it around!

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All of us here are super excited about this new way to do school. I planned the whole year with what weeks we are taking off and my dd was so ecited to see her b-day week we will be off. We will do 4 wks off in Dec and take a 6 wk summer break. Spring Break will fall whatever week off is the closest.

I think this will def keep us from burnout. And what a way to keep the children encouraged....anything they get behind on due to laziness they have to do the week "off"! Love it!

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This sounds interesting, I'm going to see if I can make this work for us.  Normally we just go until we are all ready for a break and then we take one, then we break from Thanksgiving until New Years, and then spring break for 2-3 weeks when the weather gets really nice here.  Maybe I can still do this and avoid the crankiness that comes with needing a break.

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I read this article a few weeks ago and thought "what a great idea!" . This is the plan I am using too!

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Wow! I recently got this magazine and didn't even see that article yet. That is very interesting (and so different than what I'm used to). I think I'm always trying to mirror my homeschooling calender with the calender of the local schools even though my girls have never been to one! LOL I'll have to read this and pray about it also.

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I went to the author's blog to see if she had any sample schedules (I'm looking for templates to print, actually). Here's the link to the post:
http://angelinainlouisiana.blogspot.com/2008/10/weekly-report-sabbath-week.html

Here is the link to her schedule--they do 36 4-day weeks, which unfortunately doesn't work in my case. In SC we have to complete 180 days of school. So to do the sabbath week plan I would HAVE to continue doing 5 days a week, or else add on an extra 9 weeks of school!! Yikes!

http://angelinainlouisiana.blogspot.com/2008/10/scheduling-our-weeks-and-days.html

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Couldn't you still follow it doing 5 days of school? Atleast the concept anyway....right?

I am so anxious to read it. I was wondering how I would do it because we only do school 4 days a week!

Thanks Leigh!

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Oh yeah, that's the plan.  Previously, I had hoped to switch to 4 days a week a la Sonlight, but if I have to choose between the two options, I would MUCH rather do the sabbath schooling! Burnout has been a huge problem for me, and I don't recover easily, like by taking a week or two off...so it's really important to me to prevent the burnout.

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I really feel like this is the answer for us!

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Here's my preliminary review of Sabbath schooling.

After six loooong weeks , we have finally reached our first Sabbath week. I have LOVED the fact that I had a close goal to make it to: 4 more weeks to go, 3 more weeks to go, etc. That in itself has put burnout at bay.

One thing I remember from reading the original author's blogpost was that she discovered that six weeks was all she could do--it was her limit. While I love the idea of the biblical sabbath model fitting my homeschooling, I am thinking maybe 6 weeks is too much for me. I most definitely hit my limit--no doubt about that. But I'm thinking maybe it was a little too past my limit... I drove DS11 to the local ghetto-fab PS middle school Friday to pick up enrollment paperwork...you don't even want to know what that place was like!

I am currently trying to decide whether or not to try another round of 6/1, or if I should try 5/1 or 4/1. And then what would I call it? I wouldn't have the cool name of "sabbath schooling" to throw around 

I will update...