For those on a 4 day per week schedule

[DragonFaerie]

How do you handle curriculum that calls for 5 days per week (specifically things like spelling or WWW)? Also, how do you schedule things that should be done say 3x per week without making your four days incredibly long?

 

I have done a 4 day per week schedule, with Fridays being very, very light. Then this year, in order to get everything done, Fridays have become a bit longer. Starting next year, it's looking like Fridays will end up being full days because I can't figure out how to fit everything in without M-Th being really, really long days. Suggestions?

[Cynful]

We don't try to do 4 days a week for 36 weeks. It ends up taking a bit longer. We do either one of two options: 1) we just go in order each day no matter what day it falls on (if the curriculum says Friday, it might be done on Monday the next week) and just keep on until you are finished; or 2) if something has one of the days that could be bunched with another, we'll do that to keep it on 4 days a week (perhaps Tuesday and Wednesday are both light days and could be both done on one day). It all depends on what's involved with the lesson.

 

Good luck,

[Mommy22alyns]

We have co-op on Mondays and school Tue.-Fri. Adventures is basically a 4-day program, and WWE fills neatly into four days. Their math and LA... I don't know. We might have extra weeks of LA and math going into summer. When we hit a time where we need 5 days, co-op will go as it's purely for fun. In the past, I have increased work on Fridays to fit everything in.

[DragonFaerie]

Thanks. I think that some things can be doubled up but not much. I'm thinking there just comes a time, when they get to higher grades, when five days becomes necessary.

[2_girls_mommy]

We do 4 day weeks because we have co-op one day. For spelling, we do tests on Thurs. There may still be work to do in the workbook first, and then we test.

 

We do a longer year. We start school a full month before co-op starts and do 5 day weeks to get a jump on the year. Then we do at least a full month after co-op ends at 5 days a week.

 

I am also learning that some lessons can be doubled up or skipped. If dd gets a lesson in math very easily then we can skim over 2 lessons in one day and then have her only do the second one on paper which will generally have review problems from the day before anyway. We never get to the last 10 lessons or so in math and we will skim over them, do the final exam and they always do fine.

[DragonFaerie]

Hehehe.. I don't think my anal-rententive self can skip lessons.

[Tabrett]

I went through my 5 day a week curriculums and removed reviews, extra practices and tests from the curriculum. It worked to pair down my curriculum so it can be used as 4 day, but I don't use WWW so I don't know if it has things like that that can be removed.

[misidawnrn]

Here's how our 4 day week looks

Day 1-

math-double lessons

letters and sounds-double lessons

language-one lesson

handwriting-one lesson

bible-one lesson

spelling test from last week

 

day 2.

all one lessons plus math test and letters and sounds tests. Gets her new spelling words for the week. Has to use them all in a sentence or write 5 times each.

 

day 3.

math-one lesson

l&s-one lesson

language-double lesson

handwriting-double lesson

spelling-one lesson

bible-one lesson

 

day 4.

single lessons, math test

 

We have been doing science as read alouds. Not doing history so much:001_unsure: I also supplement with MM if needed based on the lesson for that day. This works for us.

[atozmom]

I am only using WWW level 2 with DS right now, but I know there are many lessons that can be doubled up on in our book. For other things like math, we take that into the summer. (maybe a couple of times a week) That way we don't have to spend the first month+ reviewing the previous year.