What this looks like
in real life.
Three answers to the three questions families ask in every call. When can my kid start? When do they actually do school? Who will they do it with?
A school year
on your family's clock.
Live instruction in small group cohorts, adaptive pacing, and a rolling enrollment window from mid-August through mid-October. The rhythm flexes around your family, not the calendar.
School-wide breaks, already on the calendar: Thanksgiving week + 2 weeks at winter break. Pods and electives pause. Challenges and Studio stay open.
Start the week after you enroll. Families finishing a tour, breaking a homeschool routine, or transferring mid-fall all slot in without losing the year.
Live teaching in small group cohorts, with 1:1 support layered in where it helps. The year adapts around your family, your child's pace, and the schedule you actually live.
Everyone rests together for Thanksgiving week and two weeks at winter break - pods and electives pause, while Challenges and Studio stay open for kids who want them. Your other three off-weeks go wherever your family needs them: travel in October, take a week in February, re-enter without a make-up backlog.
A day that
bends to your child.
Tuesday at 2 PM is piano. Wednesday at 10 AM is when she actually thinks. We schedule around those facts. Mornings start in a learning pod with the same group, electives fill the afternoon - and Studio is open whenever they're ready.
- Live electives
Six electives open today across the catalog, most of them in the afternoon. Your child picks up to 3 for the term, plus their core academic cohorts.
- Morning learning pod
9–10 AM, with the same small group and the same Recess adult every school morning. The day starts together, and the work starts with it.
- Community Hour
10–11 AM, every school day. A familiar, supervised room for games, conversation, and time with the wider Recess community.
- Homework / Studio
Available when your child is ready to do it.
- 11 AM Spanish
- 12 PM Debate
- 1 PM Dungeons & Dragons
- 3 PM Creative Writing
- 4 PM Chess
- 5 PM Foundations of Science
- 9–10 AM Learning pod, hosted by a Recess adult
- 10–11 AM Community Hour
Homework lives here — your child opens it when they're ready.
Tell us when piano is, when the orthodontist runs late, when your child's energy peaks. We schedule the cohort sessions around that, not the other way.
After each live session, an asynchronous Studio queue: a math set, a writing draft, a reading passage. Done at their pace, on the couch or the kitchen table. Built-in tutor answers in seconds.
The day starts in a small learning pod - the same kids and the same Recess adult, every school morning. Body doubling for the kid who works best with company, and a familiar room to land in first thing.
After each live session, the teacher drops a small set into your child's Studio — a math problem run, a paragraph to draft, a passage to read aloud. They do it when they're ready, at their pace, with a 24/7 tutor in the corner. The next session picks up exactly where the Studio ended.
Their people
are already here.
Academics are the engine. Community is the rest of the school. Live rooms, moderated threads, and making-things-with-other-kids run on a separate track - so your child has somewhere to show up, and someone to show it to.
Recess Squads run as small, persistent groups - board games, Minecraft worlds, Socratic discussions. Community Hour and Teen Hour run on a daily clock so a familiar room is always a click away.
- Recess Squads
- Community Hour
- Teen Hour
Moderated interest channels - mathy unschoolers, fiction book club, show-and-tell, regional parent groups. A Recess News feed keeps families looped in without becoming another social app to police.
- Show and Tell
- Mathy Unschoolers
- Recess News
Rolling Challenges give kids an excuse to make - a Minecraft biome, an entry in the Recess Art Book, a short news report. Over 200 challenges across math, music, writing, code, and entrepreneurship - small enough to start today, ambitious enough to end in a published book or a shipped game. The artifacts they finish stack into a portfolio.
- Recess Art Book
- Minecraft biome briefs
- News report