We probably have all been there. You and your children are plowing along in your homeschool. It’s the end of April and you check your Facebook or Instagram and your fellow homeschool friend has declared, “We are done with homeschooling for the year!!” You sigh and think to yourself, how can they be done already?? And then you begin to play the dangerous comparison game, comparing your homeschool to someone else’s.

Before you stress yourself out, let me give you some insight on what being finished for the year really means. I actually asked a few different moms what they meant and this is what I found.

You actually are finished with everything

Yep, that’s right. You’ve finished every book for every subject and every assignment is complete. And you can rest easy for the summer, knowing that you’ve checked every box and crossed off all items on your list. That is probably not the reality in most homeschools (or in any public school for that matter), but every now and then, you come across a brave mama who has accomplished this for her homeschool.

Calendar date

You have set a date for when school will end and no matter what, that date on the calendar reflects your last day of school. (Depending on your state, this date may be guided by the required 180 days of instruction, at which time, school is over.) School stops for the summer before it resumes again in the fall.

Year-round homeschooling

School never really ends, but is adjusted at a certain point. That “end date” on the calendar signifies a shift in how schooling is done, but you don’t stop everything. Instead of doing all the subjects and all the worksheets and all the maps and all the projects, you slow down and go at a “summertime” pace. That means just a few core subjects, like Bible and Math, and you sprinkle in some summer reading and self-led projects, and your summertime schooling is set.

Feeling as an indicator

Sometimes you just reach a point where the feeling in the air is: school is over. The kids are done, you’re done and everyone is ready for an academic break. Rather than fight through for another few weeks because everyone is still in school, you decide to listen to what is going on in your home. You place a bookmark in the last place you left off and you shelve that book until the fall and declare that school is over. At that point, you pick back up where you left off and carry on.

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These are just some of what can define being “done” because don’t forget that there is unschooling and Sabbath-schooling which may or may not follow the traditional school year. Anyway, I offer this little bit of clarity because I use to always wonder what other mamas meant when they said school is done. Somehow, when I began homeschooling, my perception of being finished with school for the year meant completing every book for every subject. (Why did I ever think that?!) So, it stressed me out to see those Facebook posts declaring homeschooling over, while I felt that we were still drowning in tons of work.

In my home, we are a big combination of all of these. Some subjects we actually have finished to the very end and felt so accomplished that we did. Others, we called it good enough, know that forcing the learning process and dragging things out really isn’t learning at all. For some, we dog-ear the page and pick back up when we are good and ready. And, we school year-round, meaning that core subjects continue, but at a slower pace, with a good bit of summer reading and fun.

What do you mean when you say you’re done for the school year?