How (and Why!) to Have a Homeschool Sabbath Week

A few years into our homeschooling journey, we started including a break week, or “Sabbath week,” in our schedule, and it has been an excellent addition for us. When I mention this practice, especially on Instagram, I sometimes get questions about what it is or how we do it, so in this post, I’m sharing why we do it and what it looks like for us!

What is a homeschool Sabbath week?

A homeschool Sabbath week, simply put, is a week that is inserted into your homeschool schedule during which you don’t schedule any school work. Usually, this is done on a rotation of six weeks on and the seventh week off.

When we first began homeschooling, I looked at our local public school schedule and modeled ours similarly to that. Generally, we only had longer breaks around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. I found, however, that these “breaks” were usually still full of many activities. A Sabbath week, in contrast, is more of a week designed to allow you to rest (or take a Sabbath) from the learning you’ve done the six weeks before that. The week doesn’t necessarily coincide with a holiday but is meant to be more of a break from the usual lesson routine.

Why do we include a Sabbath week in our homeschool schedule?

We include a Sabbath week in our schedule because after four years of homeschooling with a more traditional schedule, I decided we needed more breaks. As I mentioned above, our schedule was similar to what our local public schools were doing. We would start the Tuesday after Labor Day (which was actually about a month later than our local public schools, but they ended their school year a few weeks before we did), and then we would not have another break until Thanksgiving. This schedule gave us a little over two and a half months of consistent school with no breaks.

Our weeks were pretty full; we would have four days of school per week, and then every other Friday, we had our homeschool co-op – usually an all-day activity – which was essentially another day of school. On the Fridays we didn’t have co-op, we planned hikes, had appointments, or sometimes went on a field trip. While this isn’t different than an average week of school for any public school student, I did notice that they often had more frequent breaks scattered into their schedule, like teacher workdays and other holidays. So I wondered how I could change things for us to allow more breaks as well and avoid potential homeschool burnout.

I originally read about this idea of having school for six weeks and then taking the seventh week off in Teaching from Rest by Sarah MacKenzie. When I read the book, I didn’t think that would work for us as we didn’t have a year-round schedule for our homeschool. However, when I decided we needed to add more breaks, I wondered if maybe we could start just a few weeks earlier and, instead of taking a full three months off in the summer, insert some of that break time into our homeschool calendar. Going into our fifth year of homeschooling, I made this change, and it worked extremely well for us. Our Sabbath weeks were something we looked forward to after our six weeks of school, and then when we were done with our week off, it felt good to get back to our regular routine.

What do we do during a Sabbath week?

The great thing about a Sabbath week is that you can cater it to your family’s needs; how you spend it is up to you! Some homeschool moms like to keep that week strictly for rest, so they don’t schedule anything else. They don’t do any extra housework or any sort of homeschool planning or activities, and they don’t plan events outside of the home. It is truly a Sabbath for them.

It works out well for our family to have a little productivity that week. Because my husband and I are both small business owners and work from home, our regular school/work days are very full, so I like to spend at least a little time doing some extra cleaning that I couldn’t get to during the six weeks before that. I also like to organize and purge things because our preferred donation center only has drop-off hours in the morning, so our Sabbath week is the perfect time for me to bring donation items to them. It’s a great week to accomplish things I cannot get to during our regular schedule.

We also like to schedule vacation time and other fun things during our Sabbath week. These usually aren’t for the whole week (though we have done that as well), but maybe just two or three nights away for a little road trip somewhere relatively close. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that we can be flexible about when we schedule a family vacation, so we can visit popular attractions in the off-season that are usually pretty crowded when everyone else is out of school. If we don’t end up going on a mini-vacation, we’ll take field trips somewhere local or go on a longer hike.

I also do a small amount of school planning for the next six weeks. For instance, some of our recitation pieces change at the six-week point, so I will pick out new ones during that week or use ones the kids have chosen over the previous six weeks. I’ll also print out the next set of hymns and folksongs we’ll be learning and look through my upcoming lesson plans to see if I need to make any changes, or if there are any supplemental books I want to reserve at the library.

I was asked once how we work exams into this schedule, and I do include exams during our Sabbath weeks, but only the two that are between terms (after week 12 and week 24). Because of this, those weeks don’t follow the strict definition of Sabbath weeks. However, our exams don’t take the whole week, and we end early on the days we take exams, so there is still a break from our regular routine.

Otherwise, I like to keep it an open slate. It’s a week where we don’t have a lot of things scheduled, and we’re able to catch up on chores around the house or spend some unstructured time together. At the end of the week, we feel rested and ready to get back into our school routine because other things are taken care of, or we were able to spend some quality time together outside of lessons.

How do we schedule our Sabbath weeks?

Scheduling our Sabbath weeks is pretty straightforward for the first part of the homeschool year. When I’m sitting down to schedule our new school year, I see when Thanksgiving is, and then I count six weeks back from that. The week just before the six-week mark is our first Sabbath week of the year, and then I count another six weeks before that week, which ends up being the start of our school year (in other words, 13 weeks before the week of Thanksgiving). Usually, this ends up being around the third week of August.

So, whereas before, we started on the Tuesday after Labor Day, we now begin about two weeks before that. This schedule works well because our area’s public schools start the first or second week of August, so we still have about two weeks to take advantage of less crowded public places.

Then, we have a week off for Thanksgiving, followed by three to four weeks of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas break before we take two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s Eve/Day.

I like to keep the period of time between Christmas break and the end of our second term, which is when we would take another Sabbath week, flexible. I don’t schedule a specific Sabbath week because the second term is already broken up with Christmas break. Usually, in February, I am part of the planning team for the Charlotte Mason Educational Retreat, and I appreciate having extra time to prepare for that. Another option is to look at how many weeks there are between Christmas break and the beginning of your third term and have a rest week at the midway point.

Six weeks after the start of term three, we have another Sabbath week (usually for spring break), and then another six weeks after that, we’re done with our school year. This schedule gives us enough time to get in our required number of school days, but we are also able to take two months off during the summer, so we still get a more extended break. Even with that, we are very thankful for the little breaks we now also get throughout the school year!

Do you do a Sabbath week? If so, how and what do you plan for yours?

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