How much of your curriculum do you finish each year?

[cakemom]

I was talking with a fellow homeschooler the other day who was telling me that they stop for summer vacation when they have completed 80% of their curriculum. Her thought was that that would be about as much as schools would finish each year as well.

 

I am such a perfectionist that It never occurred to me to consider that as an option but it makes me think, how much do we REALLY need to finish before we will just be repeating ourselves next fall anyway? Am I trying to do too much just so I will not feel guilty that I have not MISSED anything? Could this be a reason my kids (and I for that matter) get burned out? It is so hard to gauge when you don't have a norm to compare it to daily and when your kids education is really all riding on the shoulders of us as parents.

 

So, I wonder, what do others do or what do others think about this? Is there some freedom in only reaching to finish 80% or not a good idea?

[regentrude]

I choose what material is important to teach. I never use prefab "curriculum" with lessons laid out, so it is a moot point for us. I always have more resources selected than I can actually use, and that's OK - my kids choose what works for them and discard the rest.

 

As for standard textbooks later in high school: a textbook always constitutes a selection of material - it only gives us the illusion that it is the must-have-covered canon everybody agrees on. I teach at a university, and my colleagues and I carefully select what parts of the textbook material to include in our classes: just because it is in the book does not mean one can thoroughly teach it to mastery in the given amount of time. I prefer to focus on key concepts and teach them thoroughly instead of the drinking-from-the-firehose-approach where an overwhelming amount of material is thrown at the student in the hope something sticks.

 

My exception is math, where we do cover the entire textbook, but not necessarily within the confines pf one school year. We school math year round and pick up the next book when the old one is finished.

 

Just because a "curriculum" contains x chapters and worksheets and whatnot, it does not mean that I have to complete it in a year - nor does it mean completing it is sufficient for meeting my learning goals; I might feel the need to supplement with other materials.

[Mrs Twain]

I choose curricula based on my goals for the year. Sometimes I use only one resource, and sometimes I use parts of several programs to cover what I need. Then I count how many days I need to complete each subject each year. If we stay on schedule, we end up completing everything. I am a perfectionist like the OP and hate not completing books or programs. I also hated this when I was in public school. In public school, we never covered anything after WWII in history, for example, because we never finished any of our books. It think lack of completion of the school subjects shows lack of organization on the teacher's part. Just because the school only completes 80% of the material doesn't mean that the school's method is the best example to emulate. If 80% of the material is all you need to meet your goals, then that is fine. However, I think you should decide how much to complete based on what your goals are and not based on a random percentage.

[Mandy in TN]

For the survey subjects of social studies and science, we use things that I have pieced together, so I decide when it is complete. :)

 

We keep working on math until we finish the text and then we go on to another book. We only stop math completely when we go out of town. For LA this year we used several different components. When these are done, ds will have a brief break. We break several times during the year, so he will probably never have an extended break in the summer. Reading doesn't stop.

 

I will stop our school year science and social studies at some point so that ds can do something of his choosing. When I decide we are finished with our survey subjects, ds has already decided that he wants to do the MBtP book study on A Wrinkle in Time and the coordinating space science.

 

HTH-

Mandy

 

 

 

 

[*Michelle*]

We finish everything. I school year round though. I just go onto the next thing when we finish irregardless of the time of year/grade level. So we are at various places in the books we use.

 

 

This is us. If I chose a program, I chose the whole program. I don't see the point in stopping before it's done unless it's just not working for us at all. Even then, it's going to get replaced by something else.

[2queens&1princenmyhouse]

When I attended/taught in public school, we never finished anything, EVER! I remember in probably 4th or 5th grade taking home a math workbook at the end of the year that was only half completed. Once I started teaching at parochial school, however, it was understood that everything would be completed every year. I'm sort of in that mindset now, especially for workbooky type things where there is a definite endpoint. With history, I sort of pieced it together, so we just ended when everything else was done. Next year, we'll just pick up where we left off, so nothing gets missed.

[Karen in CO]

Just as a counter to the public-schools-never-finish-everything anecdotes, my dd12 attends a public, classical charter school that has a really well-planned, integrated curriculum. I was very surprised at the amount they covered and the fact that they did indeed complete everything they had planned. They finished the math book along with several additional math sections the teacher added. They finished their Warriner's Grammar book along with a poetry unit and 4 book studies with inetegrated writing. They finished the whole science book along with a tree and an insect study and project. They finished 18 chapters in Ecci Romani, just as they'd planned. They finished all the history that had been planned doing every chapter with additional material. You get the idea? They pushed the kids, and the kids rose to the challenge. I know for a fact that I would not have required as much from my dd, and she would not have completed as much without the lofty but achievable goals.

 

Having said that about my logic stage dd, I set goals of steady progress for my younger dd . She had serious issues that needed to be dealt with that could not be put on a timetable. Her vision took as long as it took. Her math skills started to progress as her vision improved. We read lots of books. She learned a smattering of German. She learned to knit, sew and play a flute. She learned techniques with pen and ink and watercolors. She spent a lot of time outdoors growing strong, confident and attached to nature. So for second grade, we accomplished everything we needed to without needing a lesson plan.

[Onceuponatime]

We finish everything I intend to have finished. We school about 38 weeks and I decide what must be done by the end of that time and break it up into doable portions with a weekly schedule, giving a little leeway for sick days. We have a week and a half left for this school year and both kids are done Science, vocabulary, and Math. Next week one will only have to finish up language arts and the other history. I never have any trouble doing things this way. I don't do daily lesson plans either. I just have a master list/schedule for each child.

[Soror]

We aren't doing formal content subjects so we get done what we get done. With skills I plan for steady progression but I look more at skills mastered then pages finished. As we did 2 different Math curriculums this year we didn't completely finish either of them. I've been administering the end of the year test this week to get an idea of what if anything we've missed. It seems we've hit everything but I see some areas that will need more practice for retention, those will be worked on this summer along w/ his times table. We did WWE this year as well and didn't do all the weeks, for one I started out doing it from the hardbook from our own selections and I also found that he didn't need it quite as incremental. I am doing the end of the year assessment in this as well, so far he seems right on target here.

[ByGrace3]

We finish everything with the exception of a few read alounds we skipped in history-- which we will get to this summer. Honestly, I have heard the "well, in public school they would/wouldn't" too often. If I wanted to match the quality of education of public schools I would send then there. I don't finish curriculum because we have too, and I don't because public schools don't. I do what is best for my kids -- whether that means to finish it or not. :)

[teachermom2834]

A local umbrella school that is known to have strict guidelines about what constitutes a credit only requires 80% of any textbook to be complete.

[Mommy22alyns]

I'm a little OCD about finishing things. Grammar and math are top priorities to me.

[TGHEALTHYMOM]

Having 8 children and some health problems, death's in the family, and some LD, we have learned that it is ok to just keep learning in some way. We have switched math curriculum, use supplements such as flash cards, games, and cd's with songs and TWTM book suggested a great game on the PC for logic that several of our children are taking turns playing now.

 

I did receive some free workbooks from a Private Christian School that were less than 50% completed.

 

Right now I am doing some diagnostic testing and it is helping me to see what is needed to focus on for 6 weeks then we will take 2 weeks off to plan for another 6 weeks. I think this will help me to not feel guilty about cleaning out closets, and gardening. We will have to plan around gardening and harvesting for sure!

[CookieMonster]

I was talking with a fellow homeschooler the other day who was telling me that they stop for summer vacation when they have completed 80% of their curriculum. Her thought was that that would be about as much as schools would finish each year as well.

 

 

I could not follow this as a rule in my homeschool. No way. Although, as others have mentioned, my chosen pieces of curriculum don't usually fit that mold to begin with.

 

However, at certain times, with certain subjects, and with extenuating circumstances, I have used the 80% logic, or something like it, to calm myself and be ok with being forced to not finish. But, I don't start out my year or a subject with that mindset.

[TracyR]

 

That number is more like 50-75% is finished in schools. With that said its a personal decision on whether you want to finish out a book or not., Just because Homeschool family #1 doesn't , doesn't mean you don't have to. Do what feels is right for you and your family. We finish out our subjects. I don't see a reason to follow what brick and mortar schools do and burn and churn through material. We take our time in the elementary grades. We do math through the summer and lots of reading too. Of course most boxed curriculum you will get the first at least 50 lessons are review of a previous grade, because they are made for brick and mortar schools and they know that the school most likely never covered the material at the end .. But if your using something like Sonlight , or any of the other Literature based programs, or have your own , then that's different and they don't follow that.

[truebluexf]

Math always gets finished. The others...not so much. It depends on the curriculum, but we rarely truly finish every single bit. Especially in history where I always end up changing it.

[BetterthanIdeserve]

We typically finish it all. A few sujects we just proceed by skill and comprehension and others I break down into a schedule. I divide all the lesson plans into 4 quarters, and then divide each quarter into 9 weeks of lessons. However, I often schedule an extra week in the middle of the quarter and an extra week at the end of each quarter. These extra weeks mean a longer school year, but a lot of our weeks are only 4 days long. Often our extra weeks are pretty light (maybe just math and reading) if we're on schedule. Occasionally these extra weeks are busy with trying to catch up to the schedule. We stop school at 170 days (the same number of days as our local school district). Today was our last day for the year and we finished everything!

[HRAAB]

I always have my girls finish math. And spelling. Otherwise, it depends on what my children need. I pull from many different sources to put together a complete program. Some of those books we might finish, but usually we're only using parts of them to make the whole. What I do try very hard to do is complete the list of goals I set out at the beginning of the year. If I were depending one textbook for a subject (like math), I would probably be far more diligent about finishing it.

 

I have heard from friends that the schools require 80% completion.

[MrsBanjoClown]

I am the same way. It is really bothering me that my second grader isn't going to finish Singapore 2B before we stop for a break, even though I know the reason he isn't finished is that I added extra practice in because I wanted to be sure he got each topic before we moved on to the next one. We were doing the HIG (including mental math exercises), textbook, workbook, extra practice book, CWP, and tests. I've stopped using the extra practice workbook, and the CWP for now. We will finish everything else, except our science book, but we are using BFSU so it is supposed to span over a year.

 

Also, as a former ps teacher, it shocks me to hear that some schools are only covering 80% of their curriculum. It would have been completely unacceptable at any of the schools I have worked at to not cover the standards. Now, the book is a different story, but I taught science and our book was used as a resource, not a curriculum.

[boscopup]

I finish all math. We move on to the next book when finished. Though so far, both of my school aged kids were capable of doing a "year's" worth of math in less than a school year (I just did math less often with the K'er this year and stretched it out).

 

Some subjects, I switch curriculum before we get a chance to finish a book. :lol: Some subjects I just skip what we need to. I school year round, so we are in different spots in each subject. Some subjects I want to finish out before the end of our school year (when we'll take about a month off before starting up the new year), and some subjects will be fine to just pick up where we left off (like spelling, where we're in week 14 or 15 of 34).

 

I certainly wouldn't use a general rule of finishing 80% of each text. I think a better rule is to have goals of what you want to cover, and make sure you cover those items. It's ok to skip lessons or whole chapters as needed, if they aren't necessary to meet your goals for that year.

[Aloha2U]

I've never even considered not finishing a curriculum. ;)

 

Seriously though, what I plan for us to use and schedule for the year encompasses what I want us to fully cover. There are times when something doesn't fit us and, therefore, tweaking or a change is required, but overall we Git-R-Done - not for the sake of just finishing either.

[loftmama]

We've never finished the books and I've never really cared. We always pick up the next level without a problem. This year is different. We are finishing all of our books for the first time ever and it feels very momentous. I'm actually quite excited. I think they will be, too, and be pretty proud of it!

[Erin]

 

Also, as a former ps teacher, it shocks me to hear that some schools are only covering 80% of their curriculum. It would have been completely unacceptable at any of the schools I have worked at to not cover the standards. Now, the book is a different story, but I taught science and our book was used as a resource, not a curriculum.

 

I think people are confusing "textbook" with "curriculum" in the case of public schools. Most don't finish the book, but that doesn't mean they haven't finished their curriculum.

[abacus2]

It occurred to me recently why so many homeschoolers do an excellent job and yet feel like a failure for not having completed their full plan. Many curricula schedule 180 days of regular lessons. I don't know any school that manages 180 days of regular lessons. 180 days includes lots of days with unusual schedules: testing, field day, field trips, assemblies, etc. My MIL works at an elementary school and said that they had calculated that their students spent a total of 9 weeks on various standardized tests this year.

 

So I've decided to plan our regular academic lessons over about 140 days and leave room for all the other educational stuff in our schedule too. We typically either finish or deliberately drop portions of our curriculum each year. I like to start fresh when we begin again after summer break.

[PachiSusan]

We finish it all (curriculum and textbooks) every year. I didn't ever know it was common to not finish. We end the school year when the material is done.

 

This year will be the first time we are messing with Math as we are testing her through Saxon to find where we'll start in 5/4 and finishing our old Seton Math and teaching what needs to be taught for her finals.

[Tracy]

FWIW, my dh is a high school physics teacher. Their 9th grade Honors curriculum consists of 22 out of the 42 chapters (Conceptual Physics by Paul Hewitt, often used by homeschoolers). He said that on average he gets to about 90% of it, and that this is fairly typical of teachers generally.

[Dory]

Unless we found that it was a terrible fit and stopped doing it for that reason, everything that I set out to do for the year gets done. I only plan what I intend to completely do.

Besides, there is something wonderfully satisfying in saying that we finished it all. That slamming shut of the book at the very end is great, and it's so freeing to know that I didn't leave anything undone or unlearned.

[tm_burriss]

We finish everything. I am not teaching to public school standards but to my own standards.

[tammieb]

All of it...

 

We school year round, so there's not typically a "beginning" and "ending" point for us. We have mini celebrations when we finish a subject and the next day, pull out the next book and keep on trucking :)

[RoundAbout]

I would consider dropping something if it wasn't a good fit or was busy work, but I can't imagine stopping just because we were 80% through. I school year round though and just move onto the next thing when we are done.

[mytwomonkeys]

we will finish everything but SOTW. there are too many chapters for us to put into our 36 week schedule and we like to go on rabbit trails with history anyway.

[Ruby Rose]

It varies by subject, but this year it went like this.

 

Math - finished and at least touched on every topic and was able to pass the cumulative end of the year review with a 95 and the goal was 85.

 

We did a DORA reading assessment and found that phonics were mastered, comprehension and vocabulary were well above grade level so no summer remediation was necessary. We are doing a library sponsored summer reading program.

 

We haven't completed SOTW 1 for history, but will read it as a read aloud this summer and move on to SoTW2 next year.

 

We mostly finished FLL 2 and will pick up 3 next year. Anything we missed will be review again so no worries there.

 

Science was interest led, and we will naturally play around with thing during the summer for fun.

 

Dd want to start next years handwriting program ASAP as she is trying to master cursive.

 

We will also be starting and playing Miqon over the summer.

 

So, even though we are technically done with this year we still learn in the summer, but it's just what we really want to do. Can you imagine how boring life would be if we had to take 2 months off of learning and exploring. Lol! HS is such a total lifestyle for us.

 

My kids are young and at this point we are fairly laid back and try to instill a love for learning and incorporate it into our daily lives school day or not. However, I do up the expectations as they age.

[silver]

Public school textbooks are written differently than a lot of homeschool curricula.

 

The public school books assume that there is a long break between years, so there is a lot of review at the beginning of each year. They also are much more likely to be spiral rather than mastery. So anything missed in a previous year will be covered again the next year.

 

With homeschool curricula (especially science and history), you often have the expectation that it will be years before you might touch on a topic again. If you consistently skip the last part of a book, you might never cover that material.

 

Incidentally, not finishing the books in school is why I never was taught about any history after WWII until Junior year in high school, and even that was very rushed.

 

It seems like a bad idea unless you're using curricula that is from public school publishers or styled after public school books.

[Laura Corin]

We completed 100% of our curricula, but not necessarily within a standard academic year - sometimes faster, sometimes slower. We just started back up again where we left off. The only exception was if we finished a curriculum within a month or so of the end of the year - then we might do something a bit different for that month.

 

Laura

[Walking-Iris]

I finish everything. Not in neat and tidy 36 week, 180 day schedules. But I do finish everything I planned. We won't finish our Saxon math by this "school calendar" year, mainly because we did other math activities for a week or two at a time and did not do a Saxon lesson every single day. But the Saxon book will get done. I continue math all year.

 

History and science are an always sort of thing. I aim for a lifestyle of science and history more than yearly lesson plans. Reading and BW-esque writing will continue all year. We'll finish the WWE. We are near to finishing spelling. We finished grammar.

 

I also don't aim to do everything in the books I choose. Other than our math and the core lang arts, which do get finished, our history and science and extra lit activities I pick and choose. So my Kinder did not and will not complete every lesson or activity in Peak With Books. I chose the ones that would work for us and skipped the rest. He will however eventually (hopefully) finish OPGTR. We do not even try to finish SOTW AG projects, but pick the ones that we want to do and some chapters didn't do any.

 

So yes, everything I plan gets done.

[Mrs Twain]

It occurred to me recently why so many homeschoolers do an excellent job and yet feel like a failure for not having completed their full plan. Many curricula schedule 180 days of regular lessons. I don't know any school that manages 180 days of regular lessons. 180 days includes lots of days with unusual schedules: testing, field day, field trips, assemblies, etc. My MIL works at an elementary school and said that they had calculated that their students spent a total of 9 weeks on various standardized tests this year.

 

So I've decided to plan our regular academic lessons over about 140 days and leave room for all the other educational stuff in our schedule too. We typically either finish or deliberately drop portions of our curriculum each year. I like to start fresh when we begin again after summer break.

I do something similar. I plan for 180 days of school. I subtract 5 days for field trips and 5 days for sick days. I also subtract 5 mornings for testing because testing is required in my state. That leaves 165 mornings (or 33 weeks) and 170 afternoons (or 34 weeks). I look at each program, counting lessons to make sure we can finish everything in that allotted time. If there are extra lessons that I think we need to cover, we do the extra lessons in August before our school year starts. As long as we follow our usual schedule every day, then all of the lessons will be finished by the end of the school year in June. Then we can take a summer break knowing that we accomplished all of our goals.

[Erin]

Public school textbooks are written differently than a lot of homeschool curricula.

 

The public school books assume that there is a long break between years, so there is a lot of review at the beginning of each year. They also are much more likely to be spiral rather than mastery. So anything missed in a previous year will be covered again the next year.

 

With homeschool curricula (especially science and history), you often have the expectation that it will be years before you might touch on a topic again. If you consistently skip the last part of a book, you might never cover that material.

 

I have no doubt this is true in some cases, but many homeschool texts have a lot of review also. Which, when you consider the fact that so many homeschoolers take a summer break, makes sense as well.

[Mukmuk]

If we like the curriculum, we finish it and go through whatever else we can get from the same author/company. Otherwise, despite my best efforts at picking the curriculum according to ds' taste, we won't continue if he doesnt like it. We school year round and don't think of year ends. I do think in terms of the next book though.

 

The reason we do this is because I want us to have a great time learning. There are no must-do curriculums, but there are must-have skills, so we switch curriculum to suit what we want. As Ds gets older and his tastes become more established, I find that i have an easier time picking hits. I do forsee that we'll end up with a wide variety of subjects as ds' interests broaden out, so I'm starting to think of shorter unit studies. Or if a particular book is taking a long time so that he wearies of it but still likes it, we will abandon for a while and return after an excursion into other topics. Ds is always happy to return to his favorite line of books- they're like good friends :).

[RootAnn]

I read Lee Binz's recent coffee table book on Summer Homeschooling and she throws that 80% number around, too. (It was free on Kindle for a few days.) I completely disagree with that mentality.

 

With that said, I plan only about 32 weeks (~160 days) worth of work each school year and we try to get all that work done in 34 or so weeks ( >170 days). We do math during the summer, so we just pick up the next book whenever they get to it. My oldest won't be done with her history or science when our official school year is done next week, but she knows she has to work on it until it is done. (There was 32 weeks of work for her, but I allowed her to 'self-pace' with weekly checkups as a learning experience. She slacked off and didn't listen to my suggestions, possibly thinking I wouldn't require her to finish. Ha!)

 

And I agree on the people who have pointed out the difference between a made-for-public-school textbook and a made-for-homeschool-curriculum when discussing this!!

[texasmama]

We typically finish close to 100% of the curriculum. This year, that number dropped to about 95%. I elected to skip the remainder of the spelling program with my boys because they tested well on the end of program test. I skipped some scheduled read alouds due to lack of time and our need for a break.

 

 

[charlotteb]

We finish some and don't finish some others. I follow the same schedule as our local public school (because we have foster children in our home who attend there). So wherever we are at the last day of school, that's it. Typically some subjects almost always get done (like history) but that's only because the books are set up in an easier-to-finish manner. I would say that even the books that don't get done, usually have about 75-80% finished. I also don't always use our book for our daily work. Instead of DD doing her phonics book one day, we might do a phonics game. So its not like we aren't doing anything, just not the cookie cutter stuff. DS may ocassionally need two weeks instead of one to grasp all of his MUS lesson so we do it. So we might be a few weeks "behind" on math, but mastery is more important to me than finishing.

I have a friend who insists on her kids finishing every book every year. Even to the point of having one of her sons do 5 math lessons a day at the end of year to finish it. I feel sorry for those kids. The lessons at the end of the year will always be reviewed at the beginning of the next school year, so I don't understand her thought process.

[Meriwether]

I use many resources. The kids finish what I consider to be a good amount for the year. When we run out of steam, we quit.

 

The kids will finish their Saxon math, Shurley English, and hmmm. I'm trying to think of something else we'll actually finish. We will finish the main science text, but probably not all the extras. Ds8 will finish his spelling. Dd10 uses the Phonetic Zoo. I will not make her finish the entire program before she gets a break. We'll just pick up where she left off. The kids are all in the middle of a Latin book. They will continue during the summer and start the new year wherever they are at. We'll actually do that with a number of things: handwriting, history, Bible, writing, geography. We are doing Explorers - Present American history over two school years (and two summers), so I view a lot of what we are doing as a two year unit instead of one.

 

I know that looks like the kids haven't finished much of anything, but that isn't really the case. Dd10 finished VfCR 4 and immediately started Caesar's English. They finish one handwriting book and immediately start another. They finish one CWP book and start another. Some things stretch out over the years. It will take 3 years for Dd to go through Latin for Children A and B. Some things compact over the years. Occasionally, things get dropped completely without being finished.

[shawthorne44]

...Incidentally, not finishing the books in school is why I never was taught about any history after WWII until Junior year in high school, and even that was very rushed....

 

I am impressed that you actually got through WWI. The teachers were mandated to include a question on WWI and on WWII on our final exam. But, they could combine questions. Therefore the ONLY thing we needed to know from the 20th Century (yes, the whole century) was that the Italians were on our side in one war, and the opposite on the other. Didn't even need to know which wars.

 

Never finished a history textbook until I took an AP class.

 

People get grumpy about P.S's "teaching to the test", but I think part of it is grumpiness about having to finish all the material.

[silver]

I am impressed that you actually got through WWI.

 

I remember flying by WWI Freshmen year and spending every so slightly more time on it Junior year. We did cover WWII several times, though. I'm wondering if the large Jewish population at my school (we got Yom Kippur off, to give you an idea of how large) played a part in that.

[StartingOver]

We school year round and do the next thing. So we finish 100%. ( There are some things we skip if they are crazy repetitious, like FLL 1 & 2. ) But finishing something gives the kids a sense of accomplishment.

[Mama2Many4]

We finish everything. I school year round though. I just go onto the next thing when we finish irregardless of the time of year/grade level. So we are at various places in the books we use.

 

This is us too. If we are not finished we pick up after our break and start the next book when we start it. Schooling year round is very convenient and supports the natural way of learning. I love it.

[Upward Journey]

This particular year ;) all the kids will have completed their respective R&S English texts, my boys have gone over and above in math and the olders finished their SchoolAid Health books. However, I've done a dismal job with Latin, for the most part have only done the writing assignments contained in the R&S texts, and we still haven't finished what I what I wanted to accomplish in Science and History.

 

My struggling math student won't finish her book this year. That's OK. It's like fractions, decimals and percents are a brick wall. Once we climb over it, I think she'll catch back up (I hope). I'm so glad that homeschooling gives us that option :)

 

Next year we are going to use mostly textbooks, supplementing with living books. We all seem to do a better job of finishing everything up that way.

[mom2bee]

I plan units/topics based on what milestone we need to reach and then I make a pacing schedule. During that scheduled unit, we tend to finish ~97% of what was planned. If I don't have a solid plan, close to nothing gets done.

 

I would never set out to not finish something, though I could live with it if things fell off track. I can't get behind the thinking that only 80% of the curriculum is okay. I'm not condemning it, and I guess it relies in a large part on what materials you are using and what you plan to use when you resume. But yeah...

[AStableBeginning]

For the survey subjects of social studies and science, we use things that I have pieced together, so I decide when it is complete. :)

 

We keep working on math until we finish the text and then we go on to another book. We only stop math completely when we go out of town. For LA this year we used several different components. When these are done, ds will have a brief break. We break several times during the year, so he will probably never have an extended break in the summer. Reading doesn't stop.

 

I will stop our school year science and social studies at some point so that ds can do something of his choosing. When I decide we are finished with our survey subjects, ds has already decided that he wants to do the MBtP book study on A Wrinkle in Time and the coordinating space science.

 

HTH-

Mandy

 

 

We end our year on March 31st and will be taking two weeks off for convention and family visits. Then we start the MBtP study above over our summer break.

[a27mom]

I think one of the great things about homeschooling is that you are not tied to specific materials and plans. I really am not concerned about "finishing" anything. We do to some degree finish math. That doesn't necessarily mean doing all the exercises etc....but we don't move on to the next level until we have a good mastery of the the topics in the current level.

 

We use materials as long as we are learning from them and progressing. Some materials are set aside and picked up again later. Some are just set aside forever. Some are fully utilized. Some I only intend to use in part.

 

I do have educational goals to meet. I informally assess these throughout the year, but during the summer set new ones. If we haven't met them I try to understand why. Do we need more emphasis on an area or are there other issues impeding progress. Maybe it just wasn't an appropriate goal, or we accomplished something else more important instead.

 

We also don't have a start and stop date for schooling. We have an ebb and flow. Jan, Feb, March, July, sept, oct, nov. tend to be more academically intense. But we are learning all the time.

 

Granted I have young kids, so what do I know. ;) But if I had to finish someone else's prepared materials every fall, winter, spring, I don't think I would enjoy homeschooling.