The Easiest Way to Plan Your School Year
It didn’t take me too awfully long to figure out an easy way to plan my school years, mainly because the first year I was worn out by February and wished for a major break. You might know how it is: the yellow school bus looks mighty tempting. After that first year, I knew better than to go past the last day of May.
Keep in mind that most states require 180 days of full-fledged instructional days, and keep in mind that you might get sick enough to take 5 days off, so I suggest going for 185 days.
So, here you go. A few easy steps to plan out your school year. So, grab a cheap, blank calendar and let’s go. (If you have a school planner, they often have an annual calendar in the front, so that’s another option as well.)
- Choose your drop-dead last-day-of-school date, even if you school year around. (That’s another post!) Mine was always May 31. Write down “last day of school” in the blank space.
- For which holidays and how many days for each do you want to take breaks? We typically took two days at Thanksgiving, a week at Christmas, and a couple of days at Easter. Depending on what days of the week other holidays fell, like New Years, we’d take those too. And how about a fall break? Write those in the blanks on your calendar.
- Now, do you want to go camping a week? Do you want to go visit your family in Montana? What about a trip to the beach? You might not be able to do them all, and maybe some will have to be combined with the holidays above. Figure this out and write them in the blanks.
- Once you get them in, are there days that you or your spouse typically take off of work in which you take a mini-retreat? Mark those down too.
- Now, start on your drop-dead last day and count 185, 184, 183…backward until you get to 1. That’s your first day of school. Adapt as you need to until you get the school calendar to work for you and your family.
Wasn’t that easy? You also pretty much already have a pre-made attendance chart because you know when you are doing school and you know you have five extra “snow” days or “sick” days built in.