Do Americans actually have June and July off school? In my country we have 2 weeks off in April, 2 weeks in June/July and again in September/October. And then around 6 weeks over Summer/Christmas. The time we spend at school between holidays is called our school terms.
Do you have regular 2 week holidays, school terms and do you really have a full 2 months off school? Also, is it confusing starting the school year off in August? And do parents take time off over the summer break as well?
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School is out from June until late August/early Sepetember every year.
There’s generally also a week off around Christmas/New Years, and again in February and April, plus a few random holidays spread around.
This does vary based on where you live though.
Yep. We get June, July and August off for summer break. It ends around mid-August
September – Labor day
November- Thanksgiving break for a week-ish
December 21 – January 5th is Winter break
March-April is Spring Break for one week
It’s a little different for college tho. but similar
My area is out late May to mid August. Two weeks at Christmas and then one week in March.
Generally it starts late August. There will be 3 or 4 days off around Thanksgiving, a week or so off around Christmas and NYD, and another handful of days around Easter. The school year ends late may/early June, and there will be a handful of other single day holidays scattered through the year.
When I was growing up we had:
1. Early June to late August (summer break)
2. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of the week of Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving break)
3. December 20-22 until January 3-5 (Christmas break)
4. Week before Easter and the Monday after (Easter/Spring break)
5. A variety of days spread throughout the year for holidays like Labor Day, President’s Day, etc.
Break is usually about 3 months, mid May to mid August, so yes we have all of June and July off (some areas are different). Christmas break was usually 2 ish weeks in grade school, I think.
Those are the only >2 week holidays I had. Spring break was a week, Thanksgiving was a week, and then some single days sprinkled in throughout.
Is it confusing starting the school year off in the middle of the year?
Indiana’s academic summers have been getting shorter for pretty much my entire life.
Schools are generally offf from late May and all of June. Some start as early as late July but alot of central Indiana districts are back in by the first week of August or so.
Having a shorter summer break does allow them to build in some extra days throughout the year or make Spring/Fall/Winter break a bit longer.
Some parents may take time off work. Its high season for travel.
My grandkids are out at the end of May & start back the first of August. Then these are their other breaks:
9/4 – Labor Day
10/5-6,9 – Fall Break
11/20-24 – Thanksgiving Break
12/18 – 1/3 – Christmas Break
1/15 – MLK Day
2/15-16,19-20 – Winter Break
3/17 – St. Patrick’s Day
3/28-29,4/1-5 – Spring Break
May 22 – Last day of school
2 weeks toward the end of the year (Christmas & new Year), then 3 months between June & September. Usually during the big break you spend your time being shuffled around to whichever family member doesn’t have work that day. If you’re old enough to take care of yourself then you’ll just hang out at home or a friend’s house and check in with your parents during their lunch break. Around 15-16 years old, you’re old enough to work you spend the summer working.
The winter break is much more fun, especially if you’re parents are on winter furlough, otherwise it’s largely the same process of being passed around during the week.
My kid started school August 8th. Will end school in May 22. (There’s 180 days in the school year.) Most breaks are short. At most only 1 or 2 weeks. Summer is the big exception.
Parents that work have to do something with their kids over the summer break. If they don’t have a relative to watch them (assuming the kid isn’t old enough to be home alone), summer day camps are frequently used. Many of these are educational and fun.
For families that are low income, sometimes there are low cost and free options. In my area, these tend to be bible camps. (Even families that are nonreligious use them because they are frequently are an economical way to afford childcare).
Here they are out from Mid May to Mid August for summer vacation. They are also off for about 3 weeks for Christmas and New Years, and for one week in March for Spring Break. And for 3 days for Thanksgiving.
Depends on the school. I knew kids at church who had a similar schedule to yours.
We start and end a little bit later than other areas — my kids usually finish late in June and go back the first week in September. When we’ve planned trips to amusement parks or similar stuff we often do them last week in August when a large chunk of the districts in neighboring states have already gone back.
But to answer your question, for my district, it’s something like:
Off last week of June + all of July and August.
About a week or so in September for Jewish holidays (generally not consecutive, it’ll be something like 2 days one week and 3 days another)
A couple of days for Thanksgiving (day of + black Friday)
A day at or near Xmas Eve through Jan 2nd
A week in Feb when President’s day lands
About a week and half leading up to Easter
These will generally vary a little bit from year to year based on a few things — which holidays land on a weekend, and the religious holidays move around based on their own calendars.
Like anything based around local school districts it’ll vary pretty significantly in different areas. What I’ve described is definitely _not_ universal, though it’s probably somewhat similar.
First thing is, we don’t call that period in the summer between school years or the period in winter between the two semesters of the school year as “holidays”. We call them breaks or vacation.
We don’t go on holiday here. We go on vacation.
A holiday is an officially named cultural, national, religious, etc day of celebration or remembrance. So like Christmas is a holiday. Thanksgiving is a holiday. Martin Luther King Jr Day is a holiday, etc. Those are federal holidays. Then there’s religious or cultural holidays like Easter or Valentines Day or Halloween. Workers or students usually don’t get days off on cultural or religious holidays.
in my school district our last day of school was typically the last weekday of may (but could go later if we had too many snow days). and we wouldn’t go back until the week before labor day, so very end of august
Here in CT we get a week for Christmas/winter break (usually starts the 23rd as a half day, goes until Jan 2 or 3 depending on how the days fall), a week for spring break in April, and then we’re out for the summer somewhere around June 15-june 22 (depends on how many snow days we had that year) through the end of August (usually go back August 25-28th).
We have random days off for holidays like Labor Day, rosh Hashanah, yom Kippur, two days off for thanksgiving (half day Wednesday, off Thursday and Friday), two days off for presidents day, memorial Day off.
The summer break for most schools in the United States is approximately ten weeks, and it may run anytime from May until September, depending on the location. Where I live, the school year begins in August and ends in May. We have a week-long holiday in October called Fall Break, a few days for the celebration of Thanksgiving in November, a couple of weeks in late December/early January, and another week during the spring. Parents often take a week or two off to vacation during the summer but not the whole ten weeks. In dual-income families, parents must make other childcare arrangements for younger children during that time. Some kids attend either a sleep-away or day camp during summer break while teenagers might work themselves.
We were off from about June 20 – September 5, give or take a few days depending on how the calendar fell. Never started in August. I would have regarded that as cruel.
We really had two full months off of school. I did not find it confusing, because that was what I was used to. No, my mother could not take time off.
Depends on the district. Ours used to go back after Labor Day (first Monday in sept) and get out in mid-June. Now they go back the first week in August and get out in mid-late May. They also get 2 weeks over Christmas/new year, half of a week in November for Thanksgiving, 1 week in March for spring break, and other single day breaks here and there. an hour down the road, they’re doing a year-round schedule similar to the one you described.
As for parents taking off over the summer, that entirely depends on the family. The wealthier the family, the more time they take off, in general (though there are of course exceptions). It’s probably most common, but nowhere near universal , for families to take a week or so.
Around here it’s out from around the 3rd week of May to the middle of August.
Usually a long weekend for Thanksgiving and two week for Christmas. Also there’s a week off in March.
I think it varies, but my kid and my wife (who is a teacher) get out at the last week of May and back in to school the second week of August.
Week off for Spring Break, couple weeks off for Winter break (Christmas and new years), week off for Thanksgiving Break. And several regular holidays throughout the year.
I was glad when my wife switched from teaching at a private preschool to teaching at an actual school district. She gets so much paid time off.
I take some time off in the summer, usually we do our vacation trip once they’re out for the school year.
Every school district is a little different but in general.
Summer vacation goes from Mid-June to late August. Roughly 9-10 weeks.
There’s a few single day holidays, but the big ones are:
Thanksgiving which is usually Wednesday through Friday of the last week of November. Some schools do the whole week, but most in my experience do Wednesday through Friday.
And then there’s usually a week and a half off for Christmas and New Year’s.
Then there’s winter break which is a week in February.
Then there’s Spring break which is a week in April
When I was growing up we had mid June until Labor day (3rd of September) off wherin the new year would start. We also had 2 days off for Thanksgiving, Christmas eve until New Years off, and at first 2 weeks off for Easter but at some point they split those up into two different months.
And yes the parents would take time off of work with the kids usually to go somewhere on vacation