Looking at the Calendar for school...

I vowed to myself that I would start school earlier this year. Last year, we ended the day before Megan's dance recital because I didn't plan very well. We didn't even finish some things because I just wanted to be done and was literally out of time (like we didn't read Megan's last read-aloud and I skipped a couple assignments in English and her last writing essay!)

Yesterday I got out the calendar and started counting weeks. I have 36 weeks of lesson plans and I want to be done before Memorial Day plus we are looking to do a month long trip in September.

I think this is how it is going to work out:

Starting date: July 9th or 16th, we need to start full days too. Unfortunately, we still have a lot of summer activities going on, so we are going to have to be VERY flexible.  I also don't have Megan's math book yet and or one of Courtney's math books.

We will have school for 5-6 weeks.

We are going camping at Mahoney State Park on August 23rd-25th and then we are going to leave on our trip from there. I will definitely need some time that week to prepare for the trip, so I may need to take the week before off.

For our trip, we are going to take those inch thick curriculum books that I found at Sam's, but am not going to take any formal curriculum. We are going to be learning enough!

Return either September 21st or 28th. I will probably need a week or so to get the house back in order. That is about a six week break, which I think makes up for the fact that we are starting school in July.

Start school up again the following Monday (whichever date that is.)

Have school until Thanksgiving. I may or may not take the week of Thanksgiving off. I took it off last year because I hosted Thanksgiving at my house, but that will probably not be the case this year, so we may have school.

We will also take two weeks off at Christmas time and will start school up again in the new year. It will probably be the Monday after New Year's Eve.

From here on out, it looks like a 20 week stretch until the middle of May.  I did not take a spring break last year and we will see if we take one this year or not. I have us ending either the 16th or the 23rd of May.

I think I need to just get started, I would much rather get done earlier than later, so I just need to have that attitude all year, especially here in the summer and fall when I have some "optional" dates.  The girls told me yesterday that they are tired of summer already and want to get back to school!