? for the year-round folks

[Sweepy]

I'm beginning my first year of homeschooling in Aug and plan to do 4-day weeks year round with a couple of weeks off here and there. I have K and 2nd graders. My question is.... how do you divide up the year's worth of material (mostly 32 to 40 weeks) across the entire year. I "should" end up with about 46 teaching weeks. How do I stretch out the material or should I? Maybe I should plug along and get follow-on levels when current levels are completed? Or should I supplement with other materials to stretch it out? Or should I skip some weeks (maybe around major holidays)?

 

TIA,

Brandi

[Mandylubug]

I'm beginning my first year of homeschooling in Aug and plan to do 4-day weeks year round with a couple of weeks off here and there. I have K and 2nd graders. My question is.... how do you divide up the year's worth of material (mostly 32 to 40 weeks) across the entire year. I "should" end up with about 46 teaching weeks. How do I stretch out the material or should I? Maybe I should plug along and get follow-on levels when current levels are completed? Or should I supplement with other materials to stretch it out? Or should I skip some weeks (maybe around major holidays)?

 

TIA,

Brandi

 

I just do the next thing. When I notice we are running low on lessons from a particular subject, I start planning our next step afterwards.

[LaxMom]

We don't. We schedule things out according to the best way for that resource, then start the next level when we're done. Some things are longer than others, some things are best done daily, others twice a week, others with a single lesson over a week. Some things, the kids accelerate in, some they need to slow down and do extra practice. It's too much of a hassle for us to try to line it all up into a tidy finish.

 

I'm sure others have different ways of handling it, too.

[pageta]

We do a 36 week schedule even though we school year round. The older my kids get, the more stuff "happens." There's always something going on. It's better to have extra time to take breaks than to be scrambling to finish it all up before the end of the year. Trust me!

[kitten18]

We don't. We schedule things out according to the best way for that resource, then start the next level when we're done. Some things are longer than others, some things are best done daily, others twice a week, others with a single lesson over a week. Some things, the kids accelerate in, some they need to slow down and do extra practice. It's too much of a hassle for us to try to line it all up into a tidy finish.

 

I'm sure others have different ways of handling it, too.

:iagree:

[LittleIzumi]

Another vote for "just do the next thing" instead of doing a 36-week year in all subjects. The girls are at different places in each subject, and at varying "grades" in them as well. Some just wrapped up, some just started, some finished/started two months ago, some have been going for many months, etc.

[I talk to the trees]

We don't. We schedule things out according to the best way for that resource, then start the next level when we're done. Some things are longer than others, some things are best done daily, others twice a week, others with a single lesson over a week. Some things, the kids accelerate in, some they need to slow down and do extra practice. It's too much of a hassle for us to try to line it all up into a tidy finish.

 

I'm sure others have different ways of handling it, too.

 

This is exactly how we do things. When we finish a textbook (project, unit study, whatever...) we just move on to the next item. That's one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling, imo!

[GoVanGogh]

I'm beginning my first year of homeschooling in Aug and plan to do 4-day weeks year round with a couple of weeks off here and there. I have K and 2nd graders. My question is.... how do you divide up the year's worth of material (mostly 32 to 40 weeks) across the entire year. I "should" end up with about 46 teaching weeks. How do I stretch out the material or should I? Maybe I should plug along and get follow-on levels when current levels are completed? Or should I supplement with other materials to stretch it out? Or should I skip some weeks (maybe around major holidays)?

 

TIA,

Brandi

Welcome to the forums, Brandi.

 

 

We school year-round.

I plan for school days, not weeks. We generally have 160 or so days of instructional days at home. (The remainder are outside class days and field trips.)

It really depends on the subject as to how I schedule the work. Things like grammar, writing and math just continue on. If we finish early, we just go to the next book/level.

Other things I plan per term - like poetry, nature studies and art.

If a book gets finished nice and neat at the end of the term, wonderful. If not, it just gets carried over to the next term.

[brehon]

We don't. We schedule things out according to the best way for that resource, then start the next level when we're done. Some things are longer than others, some things are best done daily, others twice a week, others with a single lesson over a week. Some things, the kids accelerate in, some they need to slow down and do extra practice. It's too much of a hassle for us to try to line it all up into a tidy finish.

 

I'm sure others have different ways of handling it, too.

 

 

:iagree: This is us, too. I simply can't be bothered to plan out a whole year's worth of material. We actually work on a quarter system - 9 weeks on/2 weeks off. Much of our "school year" revolves around the (RC) liturgical year. Works out nicely.

[GAPeachie]

We don't stretch. If something is taking longer, we take our time. If we zip through, we keep chugging.

 

When we finish something we start fresh. We started some new curriculum in May this year, but I have a few subjects that we are still working on.

[kalanamak]

E.g. for math, I divide up the number of pages in a "year" of work, into 12 sections and make a note at the bottom of the work book pages. I make that the minimum, or if I don't keep up, I have a reason for it (e.g. we took a month detour through Key to Fractions this year). If I'm ahead, but no one is exhausted or tearful or pressured, I just keep going and start the next thing.

 

E.g., this year we got through GWG in 9 months. Kiddo was not lost, so we started GWG 5, which begins with review. Since we are "ahead", I feel comfortable mixing something else in to widen understanding, to give us a change of pace, and to confirm kiddo is "getting" it. So, we are doing a pause for Sentence Island, and will pick GWG back up in July.

 

E.g. We finished WWE 3 in March. I decided to not start WWE 4 until August, so we are just now finishing up WT 1 and will get through WT2 by September, and then I'll start WWE4. WT is a little different, mixed in some dictionary skills, and is easier, so kiddo covers more ground. He got out WWE 4 today and swears he's ready for it, so I may start that up and not slip back into WT2 unless WWE4 is too much.

 

Hope these examples help.

[purplemama]

We end up taking off about 12 weeks throughout the year, and that gives me 40 weeks of teaching time. I find that perfect for allowing time for sickness, lack of motivation, or "life" that happens to get us off schedule and that leaves us behind somehow. Most curriculum I have found is for 36 weeks (the typical public school year) or less.

[black_midori]

We've done 2 different ways, and both have had their pros & cons! :)

 

1) Done the next thing in the book & just started a new book at the end.

- the definite benefit of this is that the scheduling is super-easy!! Most of the books we used were 36 week schedules, but we started them at different times & paced differently through some (for instance, sometimes we'd want to do an extra math lesson or grammar or something). We just kept going indefinitely and never really had much concern for what grade level we might or might not be in at the time in that particular book.

- the biggest con, and the reason I stopped this, is that we never finished any given school year in any define, noticeable way. This isn't necessarily a con for some people (and I didn't think it would be for us, either), but I felt like I needed some sort of closure every once in a while. I had an overall end-goal, but I didn't have a yearly end-goal - and I decided I needed one. I wanted to pick a day & plan to have everything done by that day for the "school year", then take a couple week break & start up a new year.

 

2) Determined how many weeks exactly will be in your school year & spread the material of a 36 week program to match your "year".

- the benefit of this is that we definitely have a solid, full "year". We start the year on X date and end the year on Y date, and HOORAH we are done with 2nd grade!! Congrats, here's a celebration dinner, let's take a little break before we move on!! :)

- An additional HUGE benefit, to me, is that I "found time". There were so many subjects that I wasn't doing much in just because I felt like my time was always full. When I sat down and actually saw how much time was technically needed to make it through X book in X number of weeks, it turned out I only needed to do it few times a week to get it done in a reasonable time. If I cut certain subjects down to 2-3 times a week, for instance, I could then ADD or ENLARGE time spent on other subjects!! Silly & obvious, I know, but I was caught up in the drive of just plowing through each book for main subjects & hadn't thought about it much.

- another benefit is that you move at a fairly set pace & can generally accommodate multiple children in that pace. Doing #1 worked out great when I only had 1 student, and worked out fairly well when I had 2 students in totally different grade levels. I don't think it would work out nearly as well now, with 4 students over 3 grade levels, and multiple over-lapping subjects. If ds6 goes at his own pace in math, for instance, he would quickly overlap ds8 and I would have to be teaching the same math book twice, in 2 different places for 3 different students. Much easier to keep ds6 on a steady keel with independent other math instead.

- the drawback is that you don't progress nearly as quickly through some things as you otherwise might. Ds6 originally shot through a grade level in rapid-time, because I just did the next thing & went along with the next book. I didn't want to hold him back, really, but I didn't want to just keep pummeling through material like that!

 

To take any subject and put it over our school year (45 weeks), I just take a "relevant" number from the selection & divide it by 45. The relevant number depends on the selection - examples:

- Math: RightStartA had 77 lessons, I think, so I do 77/45 = 1.7 - I basically need to do 2 lessons a week (I'll finish a bit early - can throw in pure RS Game days or practice worksheets somewhere in there).

- Math: Math Mammoth 1b has approx 125 pages - 125/45 = 2.77 so I do basically 3 pages a week

- What your X grader needs to know has xx pages - xx/45=y

- Shurley English has I think 5 lessons each week for 28 weeks. I multiply 5*28=140; 140/45=3.1, so I do about 3 lessons a week.

 

I plug the above into a spreadsheet & then I determine exactly WHAT lessons I will be doing each week over the year. I then print a form for each week, fill in what needs to be done that week from the master sheet & check it off as I go.

 

3) Actually, this upcoming year I'm doing a bit of a mix of both of the above! I'm using Sonlight for certain things, so my spreadsheet is basically already done. Rather than tweaking it much, I plan to just do "the next day", which will take a 36 week schedule and stretch it over 45 (since they've already done most of the work for me, I figured I'd just write dates in up at the top).

For the "extra" subjects, I plan to just find out approximately how many lessons I might need to do to get through it and then play it by ear, just doing the next lesson in the book (like Spanish, Science).

For Math, I will be using RightStart again and will just divide out the number of lessons over 45 weeks.

[LillyMama]

It kind of depends on the subject. For math, reading, phonics, spelling... we just move from one thing to the next. I'm a little more rigid with History and Science because those are the ones I'm more likely to fall behind on. My kids typically fly through math and phonics books, so we sometimes take breaks between them, but we slug through history and science pretty consistently- too many other fun things come up when your friends don't year-round school and our afternoons seem to disappear...

 

I will say that I think your kids are young enough that you can sort of practice this year to see what works. But don't be afraid to change your mind. If you start off just moving along with the next thing and that doesn't work, take a week at Christmas and plan the next two months more rigidly and see if you like it. I think the beauty of home-schooling is that you get to change your mind as many times as you want.

[phathui5]

We homeschool year round, with a week or two off during the year and the a day off about every other week.

 

When we finish a book like math or language arts, we move on to the next one. For history and science, we make the subject we're on (i.e.- medieval history) last for the "school" year.

[Wheres Toto]

I just do the next thing. When I notice we are running low on lessons from a particular subject, I start planning our next step afterwards.

 

:iagree: My kids are not moving the same speed in any two subjects so I found planning things out to be impossible. I want to be able to move faster if something is coming easily and slow down if they are having trouble.

 

With young kids I also find it almost impossible to plan our breaks. We break whenever someone is sick, whenever a bunch of fun field trip opportunities come up, whenever the weather is really gorgeous for a while. I want to be able to take advantage of things that come up and I can't do that if I'm tied to a schedule.

[kalanamak]

With young kids I also find it almost impossible to plan our breaks. We break whenever someone is sick, whenever a bunch of fun field trip opportunities come up, whenever the weather is really gorgeous for a while. I want to be able to take advantage of things that come up and I can't do that if I'm tied to a schedule.

 

I do this. We rain a lot, therefore, a sunny day trumps anything in the winter.

[heart'sjoy]

around 3rd grade with the first school age and K with the second school age I started seeing I needed a few written goals in each subject to keep my focus.

 

These were usually "guestimates" = on page 114 by Aug 15, memorized Song or Train by Aug 31, etc

 

By making these guesses I could tell if a workbook needed to be scheduled 2x week, 4x a week, or even 8 times a week.

 

Now that I have junior high, I can plan right next to the goals what to grade and what % of a final grade each component will be.

 

For now the goal setting is twice a year at about the half way point. The kids do about 1/2 pace school with stuff that doesn't need me, while I work through the past goals and write new goals. It takes several days to do but has really helped me not to miss things.

[hsmamainva]

We wrapped up last year's studies the 1st week of May and will start the new school year on Monday!

 

We'll take off a week for 4th of July and 3 weeks off in August for various fun summer activities...but for those weeks that we're doing school, we are doing school. All subjects...normal school day.

 

We'll also take a week off at Thanksgiving...3 weeks off at Christmas...and a week off for Spring Break in March. We should wrap up the school year by the 1st week of May...complete our standardized testing...and then we're off again until the middle of June .. and it starts all over again! :D

[Desert Strawberry]

We just keep chugging. If we run out of something, we work on other stuff. One of the great benefits of homeschooling is thatxeach kid can work at his own pace in every subject.

[happymomofboys]

We do a 36 week schedule even though we school year round. The older my kids get, the more stuff "happens." There's always something going on. It's better to have extra time to take breaks than to be scrambling to finish it all up before the end of the year. Trust me!

 

:iagree: WSS.