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Hi. My 9 y.o. dd has been doing CTC for 2.5 weeks now and the days take so long to finish. She did Preparing last year and places in CTC according to the placement chart. However, while she is capable of doing all the activities in CTC, it takes her a long time. She does seem to be fairly diligent, so I don't think it's a distraction/dawdling issue.
I am considering switching to an alternate schedule and thought about going at half-pace (she is only 9 after all), but I really want her to have Math and LA daily. Does anyone have ideas for how I can do this easily? Or is there something I'm missing? Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your responses

Which math and grammar are you using? If you are using Singapore, you can just follow the schedule for the level that you are in regardless of how it lines up with the daily plans. Several different levels of math are listed in the appendix. You could just check-it off in the appendix as you finish it. For grammar, if you are using R&S4, I would probably just go ahead and complete one lesson per day. That might make it tough to line back up with the guide later though. I think I would just stay on track with Write with the Best and only do it when it is on the half that you are doing. For dictation and DITHOR, I would just continue to do that 3 times a week.

One thought that comes to mind is maybe instead of half-speed, you could take some of the activities that might be taking longer throughout the week and do them on the 5th day each week. So perhaps you could do all of the painting on the fifth day, maybe one of the notebooking assignments or experiment, etc. Perhaps you could set a time each day to finish and any unfinished work is completed on the 5th day . That would be one way to continue full-speed yet cut down on the time each day.

Have you figured out where she is taking longer than the usual times? Here is a link to the usual times: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2093&start=135 It is about 1/2 way down the page on page 10 of the schedule thread. That has helped me sometimes when our days are running long to figure out where we are spending our time. You are right though that your dd is just 9, and it wouldn't hurt at all to slow down the pace to half-speed for a while. You might find that it only will take a few weeks to a month at half-speed until she has it down pat and is speeding through the day. If you do think that it will just be a short while at half-speed, then I think I would just stick to true half-speed and not worry about getting in math and LA everyday since it is just a temporary situation. That way you can stay on track with the guide. At least for me, it helps me when I be lined up with everything in the guide.

We are in week 3 of CTC and I still feel like our days are running a bit longer than they should some days. I realize that we are still getting into the groove of the new guide, and it will take a bit of time until we are really in the zone. I don't mind that we are taking a littler longer right now. I know that our days will get shorter soon. I remember feeling this way at the beginning of Preparing too so I know that we'll hit our stride soon.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply!

You've given me some things to think about. I think we will try going at half speed for a few weeks, doing math daily (we're not using Singapore, so it's easy enough to just do math daily). I won't worry about doing LA daily for now. Meanwhile, I will see where it seems to be taking her too long and see if we can adjust anything there. If she ends up picking up the pace and breezing through school, we will go back to full time.

Thank you again!