Running Out

As a kid, I remember running out of school before we ran out of book. Every year. I hated that we never got to the end of anything. I never studied modern American History. We never saw what was at the end of the science text.

As a home schooler, I vowed we would finish our books. We're not going to skip from the middle of Roman civilization until after it fell. Kate's a quick study and I'm a planner, so I just outlined a schedule that ends our social studies and science at the end of our scheduled year. Perfect.

Many of our books were set up in weeks anyway, so I just followed those. As we're getting closer to the end of the year I thought I would check our progress and see if any adaptations were needed.

I found that our spelling only had 30 units. To keep our tests on Friday, on our four day weeks, we just popped two practice sheets on one day. But that means we'll finish spelling several weeks early. I have a new spelling program that I picked up used, Spelling Power, that I think will lend itself just fine to starting after we review all of our years' spelling words. Problem solved.

We ran out of our McGuffey Reader before Christmas and we've worked with library books so far, though I think I may pull old McGuffey back out later this term.

Then there is writing. Again, our book will give out about two weeks before we reach the end of the term. Well, we've been practicing copy work from the first chapter of Luke this year on Fridays anyway, so we can continue with that those last few weeks of class.

We're currently hitting grammar topically (no text) and most of our weekly subjects (music, art, etiquette, logic, and P.E.) are easily covered with the books we have or library cards and weekly trips to gymnastics.

I have one gaping hole though. We will finish the first grade math text in early February, leaving about 3 months of school remaining. I suppose the thing to do is order the next grade up. She still needs to practice memorizing all those pesky math fact though, so I debate moving on. She knows most of them, but there are still several to get down.

I suppose it is hard to match pace with those books after all. Though I somehow like this running out better than the other way!

*** We are required by our state to have 180 days of at least four hours apiece, so completely dropping subjects as we reach the end of the books isn't going to work for that schedule, plus some things like math, I think she needs to keep in practice for anyway. ***