heartofdakota.com

Hi all -

For those of you who are using the materials that have lessons for 5 days a week (as in Bigger and Beyond), what do you do when you only school 4 days a week? Do you build it into 4 days or do you roll it into the next week or something else?

Many just do the program 'as is' and pick up with Day 5 on Monday. This is what we did with Bigger...in the fall when we had co-op on Fridays, or if Daddy was home on Fridays. Beginning in January, we will be doing 5 days a week because we probably will not be participating in co-op. If that happens to change, we would just do the 4 days and pick up with Day 5 on Monday. This should allow us to get through about Unit 25 or so by the end of the year...and we may try to do a couple of units a week for a few weeks to 'catch up' due to our personal circumstances this year, but it's really not necessary. I'm just one who likes to 'finish' the book.

Others do complete 5 days within 4, and I'm sure they will be along to tell you how they do it.

We just keep going where we left off. I find it not to be a big deal. If it were on a weekly grid or said "Friday," then I probably couldn't do it that way, but since it just says "Unit 5 Day 5" for example, I find it not to be a big deal. I think you could just do a little extra each day to get it done in 5, but I'd rather do it as written and just spread it out a little. We school year round though. Also, we do 5 days some weeks, 3 on others, 4 on still others. We're pretty flexible. It works out fine for us.

I'm doing Bigger and LHTH this year and we do as the other ladies have said. We typically do 4 days a week and just pick up where we left off last. It works great that way! Today we actually picked up on Day 4 of a unit after 2 weeks + off, and my ds seems to remember everything amazingly well! (I had it planned out so that we would finish our unit...and our books for storytime and DITHOR right before our break, but that didn't happen. )

Kathleen

Right now DS is just doing LHTH and we only do about 3 days of school a week. We just pick up where we left off the next week. Even when we move on to the other programs, I probably won't do more than 4 days in a week since we are planning on schooling year round. We'll just pick up where we left off and continue on.

We have done a variety of things through the years. Some years, we've schooled 4 days with the HOD guide and saved the 5th day for extra things I wanted to do. Then, we've just rolled the guide over to the first 9 weeks of the next year to finish. Other years, we've schooled 5 days with HOD, when we've needed to move more quickly through a guide.

Some years I've halfed a guide, like we're doing with LHFHG last year and this year with my 6 year old. We did it half-speed last year and are now up to full-speed this year (because he was ready). We'll even get to start Beyond the last 6 weeks or so of this school year, giving us a jump start on next year.

On an even more interesting note, we got a later start than I planned this year, so I'm doing Preparing Hearts 5 days a week to still finish on time (even though it's a 4-day plan)!

I say all of this to show you that you can change how you use the guides each year to get the best fit for your current situation. We certainly do. Although I am a huge box checker, so we still do everything in every guide following the daily plans as written.

Blessings,
Carrie