I heard a very similiar story from a homeschool mom I know and she only had one school age child when she moved into a small town.

Last year, our first full year, we did 4 days a week & friday the kids took art classes in another town. We didn't do any other lessons that day like math, etc. It pretty much tied up the whole day. This year we won't be doing the classes (just too far away, time, gas, money, etc) so we'll have that 5th day. But it'll be a fun day (I think!) We'll have a different schedule. We won't do our "workbooks" but they'll still do some kind of math, reading, writing, grammar, spelling, etc within the context of the music, art, and science experiments that we'll do that day.

We'll start Aug 22 but take a long Labor Day Weekend. As a (former) ps kdg teacher I would start with small but real steps... did my main subjects at the scheduled time but allowed lots of wiggle room & down time if needed in between during the first week, by the 2nd week we had our schedule down. Now that I hs (2nd year) we're going to start out doing every subject on the schedule in order but let the times lax if needed; Bible, Science, Math, Lang Arts, Lunch, History. I've planned that we'll do those before lunch and leave history for after. Then Friday will be Bible, Math, Creative Writing, Art History, Music, Art Lesson, & Project Time - Science, art or whatever.

You do have to make things work for you, everyone's schedules are going to be different depending on what else they have going on. My oldest will be playing middle school volleyball every day from 3:00 on so I need (and want) to be done by 2 (but only thru october). Also I don't want to start too early, but I think we'll have to start at 8 to get it all in (altho we didn't start til 9 last year!) I want a full hour off for lunch & park time, and I want to do Science and History every day. But I also need 1 on 1 time for math with 3 kids at different levels, they are not that independent yet, plus 1 on 1 for some vocabulary, grammar & Latin - and I don't want to do school in the evenings. So scheduling is very tricky and I did plan it all out. I am very pleased with our plan on what we should do & how we will do it, now its just a matter of making it happen. I formerly taught Kindergarten in ps and felt that it was comforting for the kids to have a routine and have comfort in knowing what to expect - i always did the same subject at the same time and that's what we'll do this year although i would love to be less structured but that's what I'll leave summer for, for now...

Thank you all so much for your input!! I really appreciate it. This was my first time posting & you know how helpful advice from those who have been there is. Feeling a lot better :)

I ordered mine from BJU press.com. They ask you to order it 3 weeks or more before you need it but I ordered a Kdg Test last week and it came within days (not quite so many testing in the summer I suppose). You do need to fill out a form to be the tester tho, but the website has the requirements.

We have been using Math U See since I pulled my daughter out of public school in 4th grade. We started with Beta and she's gone all the way through Delta in a little over a year. She has been very successful with it, she gets it, she's mastering the material, and we love it. However I'm wondering if I should supplement it with something like Singapore Math. Her ITBS scores showed that she made a full year's growth in Math last year with Math U See, but since she was so far behind before that, she is still a year below "grade level." What are your thoughts?