When to take kids out of elementary school for WDW..

[PinkPixel]

When do people with young school age kids go to Disney? Do you take your kids out of school and when do you do it? Any school year vacation plans that worked would be interesting to hear. I'm stumped when I look at the calendar!

 

[martikus]

We had no issues until son got to middle school and then too hard to make up work. Remember elementary grades will not show up on a final transcript . That said we didn’t do after 3rd grade as he always had stuff going on.

 

[Brett Wyman]

Kindergarten and 1st grade for us. Once 2nd grade hit the work was too cumulative to miss an entire week of school.

 

[SleeplessInTO]

We do March break or winter break (2 weeks here for each so easy to fit in a trip). And the summer I’m fine with DD missing a day or two of camp, so we do some long weekends. Probably for the best as I’m not sure I can do Florida heat for longer than 3-4 days!

 

[BlancheNeige7]

I'm a high school teacher and strongly encourage parents to take their kids out on vacation whenever they can. It is not always possible to schedule during breaks for various reasons. Memories and time spent together as a family is way more important than whatever we will be doing over 5 days of class. I catch up students with the main points of the lessons when they get back. Some schools have different policies for student absences so it is a good idea to send a message to the teacher/school before booking. In middle and high school some times of year are a bit trickier to catch up.

My girls have been to Disney many times during the school year with my inlaws. I email the teacher ahead of time and have kept it to 5 days away at most.

 

[Micca]

We took our DDs out of school to go to WDW several times over their elementary/middle/high school years. We now take our 2 DGDs once a year in the spring. Work with the teacher(s) and most will respond "Can I go with you?"

 

[PinkPixel]

Kindergarten and 1st grade for us. Once 2nd grade hit the work was too cumulative to miss an entire week of school.

My DD is a rising 2nd grader so I'm concerned and with what she missed in K in 2020/2021. Did you travel on breaks or summer after? We travelled in June after school last two years and it was just so HOT.

 

[PinkPixel]

I'm a high school teacher and strongly encourage parents to take their kids out on vacation whenever they can. It is not always possible to schedule during breaks for various reasons. Memories and time spent together as a family is way more important than whatever we will be doing over 5 days of class. I catch up students with the main points of the lessons when they get back. Some schools have different policies for student absences so it is a good idea to send a message to the teacher/school before booking. In middle and high school some times of year are a bit trickier to catch up.

My girls have been to Disney many times during the school year with my inlaws. I email the teacher ahead of time and have kept it to 5 days away at most.

Do you find it's better to be absent before spring break or after academically? My daughter is only 6 but I did notice when her friend didn't come back after spring break until Wed or Thursday the next week that maybe it was more catching up and not testing etc.

 

[PollyannaMom]

Do you find it's better to be absent before spring break or after academically?

My DS preferred to miss the last couple of days before a break rather than the first couple of days after. (He didn't like missing the introductions to new units.)

...which leads into what we usually did - just tack a couple of days onto an existing school break. The only time he missed a whole week was in preschool.

My advice is to let the teacher know in advance. Ask what she'll be covering that you can practice outside of school (times tables or what-have-you) and for any worksheets that she "might already have copied". The key is letting her know that you're serious about doing your part to keep the student up, and that you don't expect her to go out of her way to accommodate you.

Most gave us a few math pages and asked DS to read x minutes a day and keep a journal of the trip. (I still have one of those, with his teacher's comments, and it's just precious!)

 

[PinkPixel]

My DS preferred to miss the last couple of days before a break rather than the first couple of days after. (He didn't like missing the introductions to new units.)

...which leads into what we usually did - just tack a couple of days onto an existing school break. The only time he missed a whole week was in preschool.

My advice is to let the teacher know in advance. Ask what she'll be covering that you can practice outside of school (times tables or what-have-you) and for any worksheets that she "might already have copied". The key is letting her know that you're serious about doing your part to keep the student up, and that you don't expect her to go out of her way to accommodate you.

Most gave us a few math pages and asked DS to read x minutes a day and keep a journal of the trip. (I still have one of those, with his teacher's comments, and it's just precious!)

Thanks!

 

[Rory607]

We typically travel on school breaks and don’t pull them out. One year, though, we pulled them out early for fall break. We only get Thursday/Friday, so we just took the whole week. It was fine and they didn’t have too much to make up. My crazy kids were just sad to miss school! But once we were at Disney they were happy.

 

[BlancheNeige7]

Do you find it's better to be absent before spring break or after academically? My daughter is only 6 but I did notice when her friend didn't come back after spring break until Wed or Thursday the next week that maybe it was more catching up and not testing etc.

At your daughters age it probably does not make much of a difference. As other poster said, reading during the break would be encouraged.

It is typical for students to leave and/or come back a few days before/after the break. Flights are so much cheaper! For my courses, it would be a bit easier to catch up by missing after the break. We usually plan to finish units with evaluations before leaving.

 

[Wendysofftoneverland]

My son (age 6) will start school this year, but his school district only allows 2 unexcused absences in a row (and the handbook pointed out Disney trips are not valid excuses). Not sure if there's any leeway for first graders, but we already have a trip booked for his birthday (which would mean missing 5 days). We might just homeschool second semester. We homeschooled his kindergarten year, but thought we might try public school this year. I will miss our old flexible schedules, though.

 

[JediBonas]

We usually take them out for a full week for our Disney trips (Halloween is our favorite time). This is the first year we're not taking them out of school for an entire week, they're going to be in 6th grade and public school this year so we didn't want them to miss a full week (they'll only be missing two days).

 

[dance609]

When do people with young school age kids go to Disney? Do you take your kids out of school and when do you do it? Any school year vacation plans that worked would be interesting to hear. I'm stumped when I look at the calendar!

We used to take them out in September. The prices are the cheapest and the crowds are the lowest. However, it is VERY hot and muggy. We did January this past year and the weather was amazing! It was much more crowded though than what we are used to.

 

[PinkPixel]

We typically travel on school breaks and don’t pull them out. One year, though, we pulled them out early for fall break. We only get Thursday/Friday, so we just took the whole week. It was fine and they didn’t have too much to make up. My crazy kids were just sad to miss school! But once we were at Disney they were happy.

Our only week long break is spring break and always second week of April which along with week after Xmas are I think busiest and definitely most expensive to fly and stay. I know there’s no magical week or answer but still trying to find it. We went after school in June last two years and it was fine the first time, but this year we hit a 105 heat index wave. Yikes!

 

[sheilafri]

I'm a high school teacher and strongly encourage parents to take their kids out on vacation whenever they can. It is not always possible to schedule during breaks for various reasons. Memories and time spent together as a family is way more important than whatever we will be doing over 5 days of class. I catch up students with the main points of the lessons when they get back. Some schools have different policies for student absences so it is a good idea to send a message to the teacher/school before booking. In middle and high school some times of year are a bit trickier to catch up.

My girls have been to Disney many times during the school year with my inlaws. I email the teacher ahead of time and have kept it to 5 days away at most.

Thank you for this attitude. My school also felt this way. As we had short spring and fall breaks we extended them a couple times traveling to WDW once and to London/Paris another time. Another time we took our youngest out of grade school to spend a week at Christmastime in London. We still have Christmas crackers at our Christmas meal because of that trip.

 

[sponica]

When do people with young school age kids go to Disney? Do you take your kids out of school and when do you do it? Any school year vacation plans that worked would be interesting to hear. I'm stumped when I look at the calendar!

We did April break last year because I wanted my mom to come and she's a school administrator. We have one of the LATEST April breaks and it's only a problem if Easter is the opening weekend.

Next year we're doing February break, because my husband wanted to go when it's not a million degrees. Downside is the first weekend is princess race weekend.

My neighbor took her 1st and 5th grader out of school for a week around memorial day weekend.

My kids are 4 years apart, so I know I'll only be able to pull the older one out a day here and there for so long.

 

[Anna131517]

We took our son out of first grade for a Disney world trip and kindergarten for a Disney cruise. It was no problem. My kids go to a different school now that assigns a ton of homework. Last year they had to stay home for three weeks and do mountains of work while two of us had COVID. So I cancelled our January Disney World trip and went over spring break. Never again! It was too hot for me, even with the DAS pass (I have MS and am very heat sensitive), and it was so crowded! We’re taking them out of school for a Disney cruise this February. I think family time is really important and I just can’t physically handle going when school is out, and Christmas break is too hard to get a whole week of leave for both hubby and I.

 

[TheSouthernBelle]

When do people with young school age kids go to Disney? Do you take your kids out of school and when do you do it? Any school year vacation plans that worked would be interesting to hear. I'm stumped when I look at the calendar!

Looking back, we should have totally taken our kids out of elementary school for trips more often. My kids have been great students and always proactive but I guess having kids that are excited to go to school and not wanting to miss, we'd only miss one or two days. When in all reality, they could have missed a week and been fine. Every kid is totally different and you only know how your kids performance will be affected missing lessons/tests/etc, but if I could go back, I think my kids could have missed 5-7 days up until about 5th or 6th grade and would have been fine. My kids are now in 9th and 10th grades and their classes are structured like college courses, so they're an hour and half long and they only take 4 classes/semester so missing even two days is like missing a full week. Even taking my daughter out for orthodontist appointments was a disaster for missing class so I'd only schedule them over her electives and not in the middle of algebra or ELA.

So now, we try not to miss unless it's truly a sick day since missing now is a cause of major stress. We do trips now over spring break and summer. Our kids get out before Memorial Day and our spring break is not during local FL schools breaks so that helps with beating big disney crowds some. We don't mind trips to Disney in April and even early summer but we have done short weekends (we can drive there) in more seasonal times like November, February. And for us, more of our spring break trips have been great weather.

But if I had little ones, we'd be traveling when everyone else is in school!