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If you do a 4 day or use Preparing?

Oh, wow. I have no problem with this. We do Bigger and cram it into 4 days because I have to have a free day. Usually it's Park Day with my homeschool group, but otherwise field trips, play dates, shopping and errands, recently on a rainy Friday we went to the dollar movie. There's no end. I'd like to say that's the day I do all my add-on's like nature study and music appreciation, but honestly I need a day off to catch up on other things. i also babysit 2 days a week, so by the time Friday rolls around I need a "no plans" day to do what I need to do and let the kids blow off some steam at the park!

Next year on our fifth day, we are going to do Artistic Pursuits and something for music (??). Eventually, we will add our foreign language studies and our state study during that extra time. I will plan the "fifth day" to coincide with the day of the week that we have co-op in the afternoon. I love that HOD so thoroughly covers all of the bases and still leaves flexibility with one day of the week!!!

All the things we didn't get to on days 1 through 4. Just kidding. Now that I'm using Preparing and the workbox system, we're actually on track and getting Preparing done in 4 days.

Now, let me just say that with a 9th grader and a 12yo, I run a 5 day school week. I'll share what I do for day 5, but I just want to mention that in several states the schools are considering lengthening their day by one hour and running a 4 day school week. My state is one of them. It's something you might want to consider. Certainly four days should be enough for the younger grades. For my family, "life" tends to happen. One example is that I ended up with a stomach flu on Thursday night. Lovely. There's no way we could have schooled on Friday anyway. Using a four day schedule, "life" can happen without you ending up miles off in your lesson plans. Having a 4 day week also really enables you to have that 5th day open for music lessons, doctor appointments, co-op, visits with friends or family, and so on. When my children were younger we always did a 4 day week, usually taking Wednesday off. I school year-round, taking the month of December off and then a week here and there as needed, so I always met my state requirement for teaching days.

Currently on day five my son does a Saxon math lesson; Latin; Chess; free reading. He also has a math drill cd for review, as well as the Mavis Beacon typing cd. Math, Latin, and typing are daily things which I want to keep going with on Fridays. Then I toss in some extras, and it is the equivalent of a full day. I can use Friday to put more time-consuming fun items in Sam's workbox, such as a digital camera with instructions to go outside and photograph 4 signs of spring, print and put in his notebook along with copying a poem about spring.

Hope that helps!

We only do 4 days a week. Thursdays are for Community Bible Study and Swim Lessons.