Downsizing a guide for students in extension range

[deltagal]

My 14 yo ds is in his 3rd week of MTMM. It is going well. He is working hard, learning lots, has a great attitude, etc. I only purchased enough books to get us going for the first 9 weeks. This evening I finally had sometime to sit and really look at the guide and give it some thought for the year ahead. It is a lot of books with the extensions and storytime. They all look wonderful! But I feel like it really is just too many for this student. This student is a willing reader, but not a voracious one. I have some thoughts on what we will do that I believe are a good fit, but I was interested in knowing if anyone else had downsized a guide or chosen to not use all of the selections and what your thought process was. I'll add that we are using this guide for his Freshman year.

[StephanieU]

At 14, he isn't in the extension age for MTMM. It is set for 12-14 year olds. You might have to beef something up if we wants to go to a big college AND your state has strict regulations for history, etc. But, in many states, MTMM would be fine for 9th grade because they only require 3 years of history and science.

[LynnH]

My ds is also 14 and doing MTMM. I am considering him an 8th grader, but he would be in 9th grade if he was still in ps. He and I made the decision to delay high school 1 year, however I am keeping grades and pretty much treating this as a high school year just in case he changes his mind and wants to graduate at the the same time as his church friends. I do not have him doing the extensions. I looked at how much time he would be spending on history each day and I figure he spends at least an hour if you include the projects, the storytime and the state study. Since 1 credit hour is usually considered to be between 120 and 140 hours of work then he meets the requirements to count a credit of history if I need to without doing the extensions. I will say that the fact that he isn't a strong reader makes me feel ok with the content also. I don't feel it needs to be more difficult for him to count as high school. If you have an advanced student or strong reader that would be different. I also had a dd who was in ps in 9th grade and she took Honors Modern American History and he is doing more than she did so that also impacts my thinking.

[Maadrose]

I think u could reasonably choose story time OR extensions and not require both. You are right in that they do all look great, but no need to overwhelm.

I did the same for rev2rev for my dd this year. We looked at both sets...story time and extensions. She thought the story time titles looked more interesting and then there were a few from the extensions that she will also read. I also got the DVD set to enhance the history portion.

So I guess u could pick and choose going back and for between both sets or just use 1 set or the other. Using both des equal lots of reading especially she. U consider how much they are reading for other subjects as well...science, literature, etc.

[deltagal]

I looked at how much time he would be spending on history each day and I figure he spends at least an hour if you include the projects, the storytime and the state study. Since 1 credit hour is usually considered to be between 120 and 140 hours of work then he meets the requirements to count a credit of history if I need to without doing the extensions. .

That's what I think as well. I find that my student(s) spend well over an hour a day on history related studies without the extensions. For MTMM I went through the books in the extension list last night and selected several of the non-fiction titles for my ds to read over a longer period of time. For the storytime we are finishing books from the RTR guide and then we will begin the storytime books in the Rev to Rev guide. We tend to only get through about 1/3 to 1/2 of the recommendations. BUT I truly believe our studies are deep and rich even though we are not able to cover all of the material recommended in a guide. We do cover all of the economy package recommendations that relate to the notebooking pages.