Bigger 4 days a week?

[christyg]

Hi! I am needing some advice. This year we have been doing Preparing with my daughter 4 days a week and Beyond with my son 5 days a week. On her 5th day we do things like health, typing, fun reading and math worksheets, reading, field trips with our homeschool group, etc. We LOVE having that light day on Fridays.

Next year, we will be doing CTC with her and I would really love to do Bigger on the 4 day schedule as well with him. We don't school year around, so I still want them to finish at the same time. What would be the easiest way to do this?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give!

Christy

[countrymom]

We are finishing up Bigger (unit 30) and I wouldn't try to double up and add more to the 4 days. It is pretty full as it is. Many families let go of that "school year" schedule and just pick up in the fall where they left off. So you would do Bigger 4 days a week and just pick it up an finish it in the fall. Other than that you could school 5 days some weeks and 4 days some weeks and make up the difference at the end with your son going a couple of weeks longer.

[raceNzanesmom]

We do 4 days most weeks because our Thursdays are so full with other activities (I had planned for our light day to be Friday, but it hasn't worked out that way.). I just don't turn the page until we're finished. That means Monday isn't always day 1, and that's ok. We'll continue with Bigger in the fall, then start Preparing. I'm guessing it'll be October. I'm not stressing. Bigger is a nice, full, rich guide. It'll also delay his beginning Preparing just a bit which I'm ok with since it jumps into some independent work.

ETA: Our last day of school is May 24th. We'll start in the fall wherever we left off. We read and will continue to read together everyday.

[arstephia]

We are doing Bigger and doing a 4 day week with it. My older two are in 4 day programs, we have a co-op on every other Friday,and my older two have other activities on Fridays, so as the youngest in line, I had to make some adjustments or I would feel like we were always behind or worse, not get to the day 5 stuff at all. It hasn't been a big deal since I don't just load up one day with the extra work. While not ideal, and not the way the guide is written, it is what has worked well for my family.
The way I make this work is
I do the timeline activity from day 5 on day 1 of the next week as a review of what we had covered before moving on. It helps us get us back into the history mode and opens the week with good conversation.

The poetry on day 5 is for them to pick a prior poem to review. We do that on day 4 after we've done day 4 poetry. That never seems like a chore as she loves going through her poetry collection (she does copywork with the poems so she is very proud of her poetry book so she picks her poems to read aloud from that.) She will often do that during our lunch break.

The Bible study on day 5 is usually done that night before bed, which is a nice way to end our week. It doesn't really seem like schoolwork anyway.

We don't do day 5 of the music, but to be fair, that music CD gets played ALL.THE.TIME, so I don't feel we are short changing anything there.

Day 4 science is a reading/narration so we do that and then go right into the Day 5 science seamlessly. That sometimes makes Thursdays a little longer, but I carve that day out as a stay-at-home day so we have the time.

For the Storytime, we are always ahead of schedule on those books so missing day 5 isn't an issue.

For math and reading, she sometimes does that on the way to/from our co-op as it is a half hour drive each way, depending on if she needs any instruction. Otherwise we do that when we get back from co-op.

For cursive, that page gets added to Day 1 of the next week, so she has 2 pages to do on Mondays only. Same with the English. We just double up on the English lessons, and since we do much of that orally, that isn't an issue.

The things that make doubling up hard is the history project on day 4 and the notebooking on day 5. I don't want to rush either of those, so we sometimes do one or the other in an evening. This allows her to tell Dad all about her history week and lets him get in on some of the fun.

So, like I said, it isn't ideal nor is it how the guide is intended, but given the dynamics of our home, I feel doing it this way allows for everything to get done without adding stress to our home or taking away the enjoyment of learning. I am looking forward to next year when everyone will be on a 4 day schedule. No tweaking required!