Bigger Extension Help

[wonderfilled]

I'm setting up school for this coming year and I have a question about Bigger Extensions. Do you use the suggested activities (oral and written narrations) for the history read-alouds and the science or both? What I mean is on any given day do you have your child narrate on both history and science or do you just pick one? Thanks in advance.

[my3sons]

That is a good question! Science is planned once a week on Day 5 of the extension schedule. Since history is daily on Days 1-5 in the extension schedule, I'd probably do the follow-up on Day 5 with just the science. Days 1-4 would then be history focused with the follow-up assessments, and Day 5 would then be science focused with the follow-up assessments. The other option would be to do 2 assessments on Day 5, one on history, and one on science - but I'd not want to overdo it, so I'd probably go with doing assessment with history Days 1-4 and with science on Day 5. However, you will know best what you would enjoy! HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[wonderfilled]

Thanks, Julie!

So, do people usually save the science readings for Friday? I was looking at it and wondering if it was meant to be stretched out over several days since it seemed like a lot of pages for one day. I don't think it would be impossible to do in one day, but I thought it might be more manageable if split up.

I also noticed since posting my question that the science book has questions at the end of each section. Are these meant to be used? I was thinking that these might be my solution about what to do about science, but maybe Carrie is thinking that we should be doing narrations on top of the questions.

[my3sons]

Good questions! The science readings can be done at any time during the unit, so you could certainly spread them out over the week. If you did that, you'd just choose a balance of science and history assessment follow-ups from the suggestions. I'd personally not try to do 2 assessments on 1 day, even if my ds had done 2 different readings, but that is completely up to you! I think the questions you mentioned are in "Exploring Planet Earth", and you can certainly use those as an assessment as well. If you do, I'd probably have your child answer them orally as opposed to writing the answers, and you may want to just choose some of the questions to be answered as I believe there are plenty. I think it's important not to overload dc as Bigger is meaty anyway, but then again, that will depend on your child. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[wonderfilled]

Thanks again Julie. I really appreciate your thoughts. I do have a tendency to try to add too much, so I appreciate the cautions.

We had our first day of school to day and it went really great. I spent some time putting together a schedule that looks like it's going to work fairly well. It had some glitches (nothing serious), but I'm going to wait and see if the glitches were us or the schedule. My 9 year old said that he thinks this is going to be his best year of school yet. Last year I had him in CTC with his brother and I think he did great, but he certainly didn't enjoy it as much as his brothers. His brothers do enjoy school more as a whole, but I don't want to make it harder on him than necessary so I decided to give Bigger with extensions a try this year for him.