Finishing the Book?

[JudoMom]

In subjects like Math and English, how many of you finish the book every year? If you don't finish the book, how do you decide when you're done? If you do finish the book, and continue on with the same curriculum, do you start at the beginning of the next book the following year or do you skip the "review" type lessons?

 

(I've got the end-of-the-year-want-to-be-done blues. Can you tell :tongue_smilie:?)

[Sasharowan]

We finish the book in Math and Grammar, but we will also roll over into the next year if needed and basically school year round. I try not to take off more than 2-3 weeks at a time, it just leads to chaos here.

[Nestof3]

Yes, we have always (in my 10 years of homeschooling) finished math and grammar books. We may have to work a little into the summer. Because of our renovations this year, we fell behind in math and grammar, so Nathan has been doing two math and grammar lessons a day while Ben has been doing two math lessons a day.

 

In high school, when we began using textbooks for science and history, Aaron always completed a book or the course wasn't completed.

 

For math, though, I allowed Aaron to test out of the first 20 lessons or so because they tended to be review. As long as he aced his test, he could skip the five lessons. I was able to look and see if they were review or not.

 

This year I plan on the boys doing some math through the summer so that they don't forget it.

[Pamela H in Texas]

we always finish every book. we almost always start at the beginning of the next book.

[patchfire]

We finish. Our 180th day is today :party: but dd will have three days of grammar to complete next week, so that we finish the book.

 

OTOH, she finished LoF Fractions on Monday, and could've finished as early as last Wednesday, and I wouldn't have had her do anything to 'replace' it. Similarly, she finished the year's required reading early, so she's been allowed to read her choice of books as long as I approve it - i.e., no Far Side. :)

[mamato3 all-boy boys]

I finish the books. I had *really* not wanted to do the last 10 or so pages of Horizons K, because it was just "filler" and little to nothing was introduced -- just all review.

 

I always start each book at the beginning, too. Review is always good in our house for my boys.

[Erica in PA]

In subjects like Math and English, how many of you finish the book every year? If you don't finish the book, how do you decide when you're done? If you do finish the book, and continue on with the same curriculum, do you start at the beginning of the next book the following year or do you skip the "review" type lessons?

 

(I've got the end-of-the-year-want-to-be-done blues. Can you tell :tongue_smilie:?)

 

No, we don't finish every book every year. When it gets down to the end, I look at how much is left, and how much of that I think is really valuable or important, or will be needed before next year. Often, the last chapter or so of a textbook just provides small bites of what will be done next year, and I sometimes skip those. My son had about 10 lessons to finish in his Rod and Staff English book, but I looked at them and decided that he could just skip ahead to the final review instead. Sometimes we will skip the review in the beginning of the next book, too. I just assign what my kids need to know or do... I don't feel compelled to do every lesson.

[Aubrey]

LOL--It never occurred to me that we didn't have to!

 

We're doing Singapore--you know, books A & B. We're just about to finish A, so I'm feeling pretty kicked-in-the-pants this yr. BUT we've also had pretty big life events every yr since we started hs'ing, so I've just taken the time we need to address the death, birth, move, whatever, & kept trucking afterward. I figure my kids don't really know what a summer break is--why introduce them to the fact of 3 mos of hot boredom?

 

Someday when life is peaceful, if we're still in Tx, I'd still rather hs thr the impossibly hot summer & take more time at the holidays & the few days of spring/autumn when one can actually go outside.

 

Otoh, I've also noticed that there are house projects that would really, truly NEVER get done if I really went completely yr round.

 

All of that said, though, ds8 has a winter b'day. I started him in K when he was 4 because of that, the fact that he could read well, & that's what I did in ps. I'd never have survived ps if it had been even slower than it was (ie, if I'd been at the age-appropriate level).

 

But after a few yrs here, y'all have convinced me that since ds is going to work at his level, no matter what we call it or how old he is, & since starting early only means finishing early, which can always be done but is harder to take back, & since SOTW 4 has been rumored to be so...bleak,

 

ds is going to do 3rd g B next yr. This yr we're calling 3rd g A. So it's not like he's being held back or anything. We've done SOTW 3 up thr the Revolutionary War, & we're pausing here to read a LOT of books, watch the Liberty's Kids dvds, study the 50 states, etc.

 

Then, in the fall, we'll pick back up w/ SOTW 3, finish it & start on 4, so that we finish 4 at the end of the following yr. A 5-yr cycle, to give us more time for depth, to postpone & give time to soften some of the big modern stuff, & to gently put ds back a grade. Just in case that's better for him later on. Only technically & officially.

 

So, although it's not one of the 3 Rs, we won't be finishing that book this yr. Which is a long way of not answering your question. Sorry!

[Brigitte]

We finish the book. But, we finished MUS Beta at the end of March. FLL will be done on Tuesday and SOTW will be done at the end of the month. We have taken off more time than usual during the year this year, so we are finishing later.

 

I do have to admit that we abandoned spelling a week or two ago. We are not finishing that book, but it was not working for us, so I dropped it. I will start back with something new in August.

[ncmomo3]

must...always...finish...book...driven by inner compulsion. :tongue_smilie:

[TraceyS/FL]

We normally finish - or have jumped to the next book early for a variety of reasons.

 

That said, i'm getting ready to move DD2 up in phonics/reading/english. I've looked at what is being taught the remaining lessons (over and over, daily), and looked at what is being intro'd in the next book, talked to her about it - fyi, she is begging to move up - and told her we will TRY it. If we have to stop and go back, then we will.

 

Her skills have been blossoming the last few months - finally a bunch of things are coming together. So i feel she is ready to take on harder stuff.

 

Here is hoping it doesn't backfire..... but we've been talking about it for a few weeks.

 

DD1 will finish and move on when she does. We go year round with odd breaks, so it's hard to pinpoint finishing these days at the end of the year....

[Dirtroad]

We never finish. We do many field trips during the year & that takes several days off the text book calendar. I never remember finishing a book in my school days & haven't thought much about it.

 

When we resume in the fall, we look at the last chapters of the former year compared with first chapters of the new year. Very often, the first 4 or 5 chapters of the new school year are repeats (atleast in elementary & middle). If they get the last few chapters of material in the new books, I let it go. If something is missing, we can grab a few days on the topic/exercises and then go to new books.

[Tap]

We finish all new lessons. If it has review at the end, we will skim and just do the lessons orally, knocking out 3-5 a day. We usually do math lite over the summer so when it gets to fall, we do the review exercises orally, just to refresh our memories.

[Rhonda in TX]

I have tried very hard to stay on track this year and have done a pretty good job. Thus, I am giving us permission to not finish the science book. I may even drop the last week of TOG. (shock! :001_smile:)

 

A friend and I discussed this just this week. She's a former public school teacher and was talking to a former teacher who had taught for many, many year. They never finished the book (and my friend was a math teacher). Between assemblies, teacher sick days, and other things that interfered, they usually only finished about 80% of the book. Now, I know most want to exceed the expectations of the public school, but I can make the decision that we have had "enough" and move on. I want a definite end to the school year, and I don't want to start next year feeling behind.

 

It takes a lot of pressure off me to know that if we come to the end of the year and we still have a chapter left, it's okay to not finish it. Do I want to finish it? Absolutely. Do I do my best to make sure we do finish it? Yes. Am I going to stress about it? No.

[joannqn]

We also finish our language arts and math early. We finished so early this year that we had to start next year's work. This is the first year that I've found history and science that I like. We have about 6 chapters of SOTW left and a little less than half the book of science left. Can you tell what we didn't get to a lot during the year? We will finish both, though. We'll just take science (Apologia) and read through it quickly.

[Suzanne in ABQ]

We've always finished most of the books, especially math and grammar. We use Singapore Math and Rod & Staff English. Neither are set up with review at the beginning of the year.

 

With math, we just start the next book when we finish the previous one, no matter what time of year it is. At the end of the school year, we just stop where we are, and pick it up again in the fall. Sometimes we need to do a little review so they can remember what we were doing. I don't skip anything. If we used Saxon, or another course that is mostly review at the beginning, I'd be much more inclined to skip and skim in the beginning of the book, in order to have time to get to the stuff at the end.

 

For Rod & Staff, we always finish the book, but we do skip lessons here and there throughout the book that are strictly review of the previous year. R&S re-teaches each topic from the previous year (at a much faster rate) and then builds and expands on those topics. My dd can generally just read through these lessons to refresh her memory, then dig into the next lesson to get to new material. My ds needs to do every lesson, along with some worksheets, so he tends to be behind at the end of the year. In previous years, I've just stopped when summer got too hectic, and finished his grammar book in the fall, before starting the new book. This year, we finished history early, giving us extra time in the afternoon. I plan on doing two grammar lessons a day (for a few days) in order to get through his grammar book before summer hits. (our summers are very busy)

[AuntieM]

I feel the need to finish the book. However, we do math year-round, so when we move on into the nest book, we breeze through the first number of review chapters. So, technically, we don't "do" the whole book, but we do finish it. Make sense?

[Laura Corin]

We finish the book for all subjects. If we need to take extra time the next year, we do. If we finish early, and don't need extra review, we just carry straight on with the next book.

 

Right now, Hobbes is 'behind' on English and 'ahead' on maths. I just don't worry about it.

 

Laura

[Carol in Cal.]

We're using Saxon, and the material toward the end of the book is quite dense. If I were going to skip anything, it would be the review at the beginning of the next book.

 

We always finish history. I'm a strong believer in chronological history, and so we just pick up where we left off every time we moved forward. We also lap back through prior periods at times, though, always hanging the material on the former pegs, and as we get to times that relate to fiction that we have already read, I call that to DD's attention so that she can get a good 'context' for the material.

 

Grammar we just went as long as we could stand, and then I declared it good and moved on to the next book. Big mistake. Should have been more judicious in this. So, bottom line, when DD got to adverbs in Rod and Staff 5, she barely knew what they were, let alone how to study them at a RS5 level. Bad idea, big mistake. It would have been better to go through the lessons orally, maybe a few in a day, for a while, and at least provide some exposure.

 

Science--Real Science 4 Kids is an always finish the book curriculum because it builds so well from one lesson to the next, and the material is quite dense. Science Explorer, OTOH, is more independent. I don't feel the same need to get through every chapter of the book or to go through the books in their exact recommended order. Same with the old WTM recs from the Reader's Digest series.

 

Literature--I'm doing literature a la WTM, no curriculum, and also doing LLLOTR. LLLOTR we are going to do in its entirety, at least the unit studies, no matter how long it takes. But if we have had enough from Twelfth Night, doggone it, and just do not want to write papers about it, I just stop and move on to the next book; also we do not discuss every single book.

 

Religion--I don't always finish every book.

 

Spelling--we do finish before moving on.