Not finishing a year's curriculum

[MrsHutch]

Do you insist on finishing all of a year's books before moving on to the next school year, even if your kids are really behind? Or is there a threshold at which you just quit and move on? Does it matter more for certain subjects or higher grades? I remember in public high school that we never finished our textbooks by the end of the year and it was never an issue.

Because of our furlough from June to January, we didn't start this school year until February and have had a lot of disruptions since we started. The kids are maybe around 50% through most of their subjects. We aren't taking any kind of a summer break, and we're trying to decide how long to push this current school year before just moving on to the next.

[SewingGreenMama]

I continue using the same books and call it the new year. We took a long break too for family reasons from Jan to March, then from end of April to July.
We started our new year 2 weeks ago, we are starting where we left off in most things except in things that I changed curriculum for. We just do the next thing, then the next. Etc.

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[Aerynne]

In that case I just keep on going in their books even though it’s a new school year. I wouldn’t skip ahead half a level, especially in math or language arts. We generally finish language arts levels on the school year calendar, but math switches whenever they finish one. In our case with language arts all my kids are like 4 lessons behind but I think I’m just going to throw a language arts party and knock those lessons out. I wouldn’t do that if we were a bunch of lessons behind, though.

Depending on what you are doing for science and social studies, you could switch gears. If your studies are chronological, I wouldn’t, but if you are jumping around more, like I do in science, a new subject within a subject could give something new to be excited about.

[ViolaMum]

I think it depends in part, too on where your kids are developmentally.

For instance, I spent almost 3 years on the first level of Spelling You See with my dyslexic. We put the book away at the end of the year and picked it up again in the Fall. But when it comes to science, she's the opposite. I don't have to finish the book for her to understand and be able to move on. She is interested enough in the subject that she keeps up with the knowledge over the summer anyway

With subjects like History, we revisit each time period so I have been known to just let the end (particularly of SOTW) slide in the Spring and just focus on that end of the time period the next time we hit it. I tend to make them finish Lit books and discuss them before calling it quits for the year, but the grammar book I pick up in the next term.

In High School, I made them do at least 80% of the book and take the tests if it was a subject I taught and was giving a grade. (I have no idea if their co-op classes finish all the textbooks or not.) Most subjects we still finished, but poor History, alas, usually gets the brush off. (My favorite subject, too!)

[knitlove]

I dove way in to this when I was asked if I wanted to teach highschool math at our coop. 80% seemed to be the generally accepted amount of the book to finish ( I looked at things aimed at homeschoolers and at things aimed at new public school teachers )


I have algebra 1, algebra 2, and precalculus text books all by the same author and it is very consistent that the last 20% of the previous book is completely covered in the subsequent book.

So I would suggest even for middle and highschool math and science once they have completed 80% call it good.

For upper level history and language arts I think you could even do a bit less. I know we didn't make it though 75% of my highschool lit books - we maybe made it though 50% and a bit more for history but I don't think we hit 80%

For younger grades in everything but math I wouldn't worry about it at al even if you are only half way though. For math the issue is that it does build to some extent and you don't want to completely miss topics.

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[rosesnsnails]

I would finish math and language arts, maybe science. The rest will most likely be repeated later on. You could look through science and history and just do any topics you think are really important.