This is our second time using an SCM guide as a family and I can’t remember what I did last time. We have homeschooled M-Th for as long as I can remember.
I would like to stick with the weeks as outlined, but only do 4 lessons in a week. Therefore, I will need to condense. Have others done this? How did you schedule all the lessons so that you fit everything in?
The way I am going to do it this year (we’re only on our 2nd day of school, so we’ll see how it works) is to add geography onto one of the other days. We are doing Module 3, so we’ll have 2 days of Bible History, 2 days of Ancient Rome and on one of those days we’ll also have geography. I’m also planning to add on lapbooking to one of those days.
Thanks, pangit. Are you just using the free curriculum guide or the purchased one that goes day by day? I would have no trouble scheduling the books from the free guide in, but it is the specific day by day that I am wondering how to condense a bit without reinventing the wheel – the point being the purchased guide has all the work done for me! 🙂
I purchased the SCM mod 3 guide. I’m all for someone else doing the work for me, too!! =) It looks like it should work fine. Even though this is our 2nd day of school, I’m still trying to make our schedule. Today I did Bible History and Geography on the same day. I think that is probably the way we will do it all year.
I did Mod. 1 last year and have just started Mod. 2 3 weeks ago. We also school 4 days per week and how I’ve worked it out is doing bible 3 days per week and then we do history and geogrophy on the same day. For the most part it works out very well for us.
I use Homeschool Tracker, which is a free program. If we miss something, the program automatically reschedules it for the next regularly scheduled day. I just started using this program this year and so far I like it very much.
The way I get through them faster is we do Bible and History every day instead of separating them. Last year we read the New Testament from Modules 3-6. This year we are reading the Old Testament from Modules 1 & 2.
Some people just use the schedule as is and make their school year longer.
Lots of different ways to modify things and yes, I do use the Online Organizer. I couldn’t live without it. I’ve used it for six years now. Last year was the first time I used the Modules.
We have used the SCM Organizer for several years, too, with a year off of it last year. I absolutely love it.
Sue, can you tell me a bit about the nitty-gritty of how you are scheduling with the organizer? I know you can simply slot in the Curriculum Guide, but what do you do about the one day a week that is not History? Also, unrelated to a 4-day week, but are you scheduling the kids’ individual books that are for History/Geography separately or just assigning them as part of the lessons in the Guide? What I mean is that, say you are doing day 6 of imaginary Pioneer Guide. It has you reading a particular spine together as a family, marking something on a map and then your grade 2 child is to read chapter 4 of Farmer Boy and your grade 6 chapter 2 of Little Britches. Are you listing their books separately or simply marking off that you have finished day 6 of the curriculum guide, meaning those chapters have been read by the students?
(The past 13 years have taught me that I cannot make the school year longer. Once the warm weather hits, we’re done. LOL!)
Here is what I am thinking to make the 4-day week work with the CM Organizer without too much fiddling. 🙂
Each week is 5 days long with 2 days of history, then 1 geography/Bible, then 2 days of history.
I will do Monday and Tuesday as written for the first two days of the week and check the lessons as finished. However, on Tuesday, I will also do the geography portion of the third lesson and check that lesson as ‘worked on’. Wednesday, we’ll do the Bible portion and click the lesson as ‘finished’ and then complete the 4th lesson for that week (a history lesson) as written. Finally, Thursday will be the final history lesson and the final day of the week which we will do as written.
Sounds good to me. I like the splitting of that one day onto two different days. I’ve already looked ahead at the next modules and was concerned about how much I was going to be asking them to do in one day once the geo/Bible is combined.
For some reason I can’t seem to do my weeks this way or use the module in this way. I just do the ‘next lesson’ or finish up the lesson from the previous day. Does anyone else do it like I do??
Well, it sounds like pangit does it like I do?? Is that right??
There is no right or wrong way to do the Guide. You find what works for your family and THAT is the right way to do it. The goal is to learn the material and hopefullly enjoy it along the way.