Even if you homeschool year around, like we generally do, establishing a school year is very helpful and the year I started doing that was a game changer. It really helped knowing that we had set breaks to look forward to so that it didn't seem like one endless journey.
As I said, we homeschool year around and I've tried many different types of yearly schedules. Sometimes we start the school year traditionally, such as in August or September, sometimes we start our new year after Ramadan/Eid. Sometimes we'll school for maybe 6 weeks and then take a 1 week break in between. Nowadays, I have older kids in public school so I generally try to plan our homeschool breaks around their breaks so the kids are all off at the same time, more or less.
But my school year planning starts with defining our school year. Below are some of the places I like to get school year calendar templates from.
- Calendar Labs - School Calendars (PDF and Word formats)
- Vertex42 School Calendars (Excel format)
- Calendar Pedia (academic and split year calendars available)
- Win Calendar
- 5 J's Homeschool - she usually puts out a yearly school calendar each year
