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Has anyone ever used DiTHOR and combined the 3 days/week in 1 day/week? Grandma will visit once a week and we will just have the morning for lessons. This is too short a time for a full day of lessons without cramming and stressing everybody. So I was looking for something we could combine in and complete without a rush. Would this not be a good idea to combine all three days? Would dc need to be super strong readers to do this? Are there other things in regards to DITHOR that I am overlooking that could cause problems in doing it all in one day? Thanks for your help.

How do you do it now? Do you complete one lesson per day? If you are doing 4 days a week, do you usually have one day off?

For me, I would always just complete one side of the plans on my half day if I had one. Last year, we only did a half day of co-op so I let my kids pick if they wanted to do the left or the right side of the guide that day. Then the next day (and the rest of the week) they just did a right side and left side of the guide. On the 5th day of the week, they finished either the left or right side of the guide that was left to complete.

I would think that reading all 3 of those days would be a lot. My kids just don't have the attention span. Plus, for them to really remember what they are reading about they need to read the book more than once per week. But that is just us.

I'm sure you could make it work, but that does seem like an awful lot of DITHOR to do in one day. First, the readings are divided out to be smaller, more managable chunks to help the child digest the reading more slowly. It would be confusing (I think) to do 3 different DITHOR activities/workbook pages in one day. I could see doing one in the morning and one in the afternoon and evening if you wanted to try that. I would try something like trying for 1/2 day or pick a certain number of boxes to get done on the day Grandma visits, and then maybe double up one of the other days or make that other day much lighter. Or make it heavy chores day or something like that.

Just my 2 cents. I bet you could make it work if you wanted but it does seem a big difficult.

That seems like a lot to me too, unless you are like me and choose very easy books for them to read (because mine hate reading and I'm trying to get them to enjoy it). Then you could read a segment and do the lesson, read another segment, do another lesson, read the last segment, do the third lesson. But I think what I'd do is have that be a day where they do math/grammar/dictation and major chores and fun reading. Maybe something like typing or a language or science experiments. Basically have that as your fifth day.

I think it would be easier to do half a day of HOD than three lessons of DITHOR. We plan on doing half days of Preparing on Thursdays and Fridays. I may push two of the three days of DITHOR to those two days, but I think doubling up on DITHOR is going to be too much work for us!

I think this would be way too much and would probably defeat the purpose of DITHOR! Plot development, character development, etc. take time to study, and books are meant to be read a little at a time and discussed and have assignments to respond to each reading to systematically teach solid reading comprehension. Before trying to cram 3 days of DITHOR into 1 day, I'd do it on the weekends to get 3 days, or I'd do it in the summer (I have done it in the summer actually and loved it). I'd just hate for your kiddos to miss out on the amazing program DITHOR is, and the way Carrie has written it is balanced and does a fantastic job of building strong readers with excellent reading comprehension!

In Christ
Julie

Thank you for the insight and reminders.