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I see in older programs the amount of independent work increases. The student will need the Teachers Manual daily to see what they are suppose to do. If you have more than one student doing the same program, how do you have your students share the TM throughout the day?

No one has ever had to have two children share a manual to do independent work?

I've not had to do that yet, but I think I would just have the teacher manual open at a central location and let them come to it. Have you looked into the Workbox system? I'd probably do something similar so that they wouldn't be using the manual for the same thing at the same time, ie. one could use it just for instructions as to what pages to do in a workbook/textbook (math, English, etc.) and the other would be using it more for discussion questions based stuff like Bible or history or science. Or it might make it easier to have them doing the same thing... I dont know.. I wouldn't think it would be any harder than using it myself though...

We have enjoyed Bigger using extensions and also Preparing. We simply share the guide. The instructions are short and to the point. We never had an issue and we shared the guide between teacher and 3 students.

I have had my two older children combined in Bigger...and then Preparing....previously. While one needed the TM, I just had the other work on something like handwriting, math,etc. Or, barring that, the other child sometimes played with younger brother or sister, or read a book until the TM was available. It worked for us pretty well....

Thank you all for your replies, they were very helpful. I have another question, do you oversee your children while they were doing their independent work? Or do you just let them go off and do it, and trust that they read the assignment and understood what they read?

I have three that share Preparing. Two share the extension books but all three share the manual. It works for us. They all three take it to the table and share. We rarely have issues with this. My son sometimes wakes up early and does what he can ahead of time but really that is just because he likes to be first is all. But really they all just share it or take turns when they need to and that works great. They will all be sharing CTC next year. HTH.

My two oldest share CTC. Sharing the guide hasn't been a problem, they keep it at the table and pass it between them for the most part. One thing you could do is make a daily copy of the pages so they could each have their own, unless paper and ink are an issue. Or make a daily copy and tape it to the wall for general reference. Sharing the books has been a little trickier, you have to stagger their times of doing each subject, which hasn't been a huge deal with a little planning.

As far as independent work, what I do is let them do the work on their own with no supervision (unless they ask for help of course). I always check their work later, and if they aren't being thorough then I know they need extra supervision for a while and I have to keep on them a bit. They then work harder since they know I will hold them accountable for their work and that I'm not going to let it slide.

As far as how independent is independent work.... we are starting to train DD1 (finishing up Beyond) to do some ind. work. I'll lay out her ind. work that she is to do, give her the instructions, do the math activity with her if there is one, and have her repeat the instructions back to me. Then I'll go and do something else, typically LHTH with my younger ones, and then when she is finished I'll check her work, mark anything that needs to be redone, and have her join in with the Fingerplay... then she corrects her work and we move on to the next thing.

Next year with Bigger I'll transition her to reading the teacher manual to find the instructions for her independent work, and hopefully by the end of the year she'll be doing pretty good at it. I will continue to check her work to make sure she understands it and nothing needs to be done over. I'll probably do that until she leaves the house though