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I am doing Beyond this year with DS who is 6 and loving it! We are finishing Unit 4 this week and my difficulty is in pacing for the read alouds. DS loves to be read to. Since he so enjoys it, I am reading the read alouds much faster than 1 every 4 weeks. In fact, we have read 4 biographies in the last 4 weeks. Is this OK? We have done the exercise for whichever biography we are reading at the time, and when he retells, I read a part, he retells, then I read more. He is following along and able to tell me what is happening, so I don't worry about comprehension. My question is, is this ok? Will this cause problems with the curiculum?

I can understand! We have such a hard time going slowly as well. The books are so good! I think it's the Charlotte Mason philosophy though is to let a child live with a book for an extended period of time so they can think more deeply about it. So it is better to go more slowly. It's great that he is still doing well with all the activities. They might be more meaningful though done on a single book versus several. What I would suggest is slow down the pace and do just one, longer book over the next 4 units. If you still want to read more, have another read aloud time just for fun where you read books at a fast pace.

I don't want to poo poo Charlotte Mason. I do love her!

But I just kept reading books from the genre we were in for that unit.

Like right now, we are doing Bigger at half speed, so we go through books rather quickly. Some books are shorter than others as well. So, we just stay within the genre of the unit.

Remember the guide is just that...a GUIDE. It is there to serve you. You don't serve it!

We might also just HAVE to throw in one of Mommy's faves...Like Mrs. Piggle Wiggle or The Hundred Dresses!

It has been my experience that when I fiddle with the pacing with the books, and say read more than 1. Sometimes I can't use the guide because it just doesn't work. She may have me asking questions that can not yet be answered. I should be in the middle of the book and the plot is developed and here I just started a new one. The conflict hasn't yet occurred and not all the players are on board yet. And todays activity doesn't fit oops then I have to wing it.

I noticed I to was trying to please my dd, by reading more and more of the read aloud during our biography (Helen Keller). I forced my self to slow down and I can see how much more she remembers about the story! She has so much compassion for the deaf guy in our local store now. We just finished week 5 and for our adventure we picked the magicians nephew its a very long book! I know this way I can read a lot! And still stick with the pacing. She actually made the connection that Digory is Professer Kirk!!! Shes really paying attention to the details!

I still read to her lots and lots outside of school. We just finished Heidi (one of her favorite movies). She loved comparing them, and told me afterward she liked how the grandfather comes back to knowing God in the book and was mad at the movie for leaving it out.