For Christmas (or insert your holiday here), how long do you break from formal lessons?

We're off now, and won't start back up until the New Year.

You?

We stopped on Dec 7 and will start back on Jan 7

We're taking October through December very, very slowly. We can't stop altogether, or the you-know-what hits the fan when we try to start up again. But, instead of 3-4 subjects taking around 3 hours each day, we're doing only 1 or 2 subjects a day, plus some reading, and absolutely stopping if it causes (Mom) stress. ;-)

We school hard and fast through the summer though, so we kind of view this as our "time off". This year, we have a family trip to attend my grandparents' 50th anniversary party in mid-January, so we more likely won't start back on a FULL schedule until after that. I'll probably tighten the reigns after Christmas, and ease back into our schedule to be strict after we return from that trip. :)

Great topic!

I want to stress that even though we stopped regular schooling...the kids continue to do stuff on their own.  They have lapbooks and puzzles to keep them occupied.         I caught the younger two putting together a puzzle of the states.  They were testing themselves since I took down the map to paint the walls.  I love it.

We're not taking a ton of time off for Christmas.  Probably just the week of Christmas.   If we'd had family coming to visit it would be a different story, but no one's coming to Vegas this year so schoolwork carries on.

Oh, and we have a homeschool Christmas party on the 19th....we'll take that day off too.

We are doing Monday and Tuesday, then we are off until the end of the year.

We will be out only the week of Christmas, start up again Dec 31st.

We always take off from the Monday before Thanksgiving until Jan 2nd or so (or when my DD in PS goes back).  We take off from our "formal" plan that is.  We school year-round and do lots in the summer.  We'd rather have this time off (okay, MOM wants this time off) than in the heat of summer when all there is to do is stay inside w/ the a/c anyway!

My son spends a lot of time in self-directed learning during the holidays.  It's like we go from structured "school in the box" to unschooling in a flash.  Cosmeo is a life saver at this time!  :-)

JC

We generally take it pretty easy from late Nov. to around Jan 3rd or so.   We do have school days, but they are pretty laid back.

My daughter is actually setting her schedule. This is our first year homeschooling, and she's really wanting to hit the books again as soon as Christmas is over. She wants to take a good bit of the summer off so we can vacation and visit family at the beach, so it's her idea.

We've pretty much taken off most of Dec. We tend to do that every year. We'll relax and my kids will do their usual workbook lessons and we'll use movies, games and other stuff too.

I've also been doing a lot of cleaing this month. We've gone through ALL the toys in each of the kids rooms and threw out a lot of junk. The kids have been a lot of help and learned a lot too. lol

They spent this past week at their grandparents. They went helped their grandma bake, my son went hunting, played with younger cousins and a new puppy. All this educational and fun so we'll count that as school too.

We'll start back after the New Year too.