Help! I've got some Beyond questions

[lmercon]

I took all my Beyond stuff to the lake with me last week and had a great time going through everything. It looks wonderful! I did come up with a few questions and wanted to see if anyone here can help me.

1. How do you organize your child's work? Do you have separate notebooks or binders for the poetry, history, art, etc. or do you put everything in one notebook?

2. Carrie usually gives an activity suggestion for the science section. Do you also do the activities listed in, "God's Wonderful Works?" (just curious)

3. The big ? - I work on Thursdays. Last year, I used a 4-day a week program, so that worked out great. With Beyond being set up for 5 days a week, how would you suggest I handle this? I want to add a little Spanish and some composer study, plus my ds takes piano lessons and has a weekly gym class. He also plays fall and spring sports. I'm concerned that trying to do 5 days in 4 would be too much. Do you think so? My other option would be to just skip over Thursday and continue until the "week" is done. So the first week would start on Monday and finish on the following Monday. The second week would start on Tuesday, etc. My concern is that the weekend would always be in the middle of the school week. Do you think that would cause the program to be disjointed? Carrie does such a nice job making the week flow and connect, and I feel that either way is going to disrupt that. My third option would be to school on Sat. morning, but I see that idea crashing and burning two weeks in to school!

Thanks for sticking with me and helping me out!
Laura

[netpea]

I'm concerned that trying to do 5 days in 4 would be too much. Do you think so? My other option would be to just skip over Thursday and continue until the "week" is done. So the first week would start on Monday and finish on the following Monday. The second week would start on Tuesday, etc. My concern is that the weekend would always be in the middle of the school week. Do you think that would cause the program to be disjointed?

This comes up often, there are two main approaches to the 4 Day Schedule.
1. Try to cover the whole week in 4 days, doable for some families, not doable for others.
2. Just open the book up to whatever day you fall on and go with it. It will not matter if the week gets broken up, trust me it won't. Tthis is what we end up doing, and even taking off a week to go visit Grandma (just got home) in the middle of a unit does not disrupt the flow. My son will do Day 5 of Bigger Unit 1 on Monday, my daughter will be on Day 1 of Little Hearts Unit 2.

Trust me, do what works for your family and it will work out.

[beandip71]

I have one notebook for everthing my dd does in Beyond. I put all her work in page protectors and I have a tab for each subject. If the notebook gets to full during the year I will just add another one.

I do not do the suggested activities in the science text, but I don't think it would hurt if you did.

As far as the 4 day week, I agree w the pp. You can work a little extra eah day to get it done in 4 days, or just go at your own pace. I have found that it does not matter if you do part of a unit one week and finish it the next. It all still flows very well. HTH!

Gina

[jensmom]

I have separate folders right now but I am just finishing Unit 1 so that could change. We also have only 4 days per week because dd has Arts & History Academy on Tuesdays along with all of our extra activities. We plan to do 5 days in 4 some weeks and roll over on other weeks. We will just do what we can do. We started last Friday and finished Unit 1 on Thursday and ended with a trip to St Augustine that afternoon. Then it was sunny on Friday (it had rained the rest of the time at the beach) and we spent the day at the pool. I love my schedule!!!!!!!! Do whatever works for your family.

Judy

[inHistiming]

We used binders for each subject..combining history/geography, science/health and grammar/spelling/copywork. This made it easy for my dd to add the pages to her binders herself. I had a few sheet protectors in each binder for those items we did not want to risk getting torn. At the end of the year, I removed everything, stored it away, and we are re-using the binders and sheet protectors again this year.

[my3sons]

We used a big 3-ring binder with sheet protectors and tabs for each thing. We didn't do the additional science activities in the text. We're doing Beyond 4 days a week this year (after we finish LHFHG), and we'll take longer to go through it that way. It has not interrupted the flow of things for us to do it this way in the past. Great questions, and I know you'll enjoy Beyond...!!!

In Christ,
Julie