Questions about 4 day schooling with LHFHG

[SarahAngeline]

We are planning on beginning homeschooling for Kindergarten starting in the fall '13 using LHFHG, and my husband and I have been contemplating schooling Monday-Thursday, leaving Friday for field trips, relaxing, activities with our homeschool group, etc. I realize that LHFHG is written for 5 days a week in mind, with each week being one unit. I am wondering if only schooling 4 days a week instead of 5 would make the unit feel disjointed or interrupted because of the 3 day weekend and the unit being broken up. If anyone has any advice or experience doing this, I'd love to hear it! Thanks. =)

[lissiejo]

LOTS of families do this with just picking up the next week on whatever day they left off and feel it is a great fit.

We opted to do a four day week by adding 1 extra box to each day. I just plan ahead how I will fit that in and it has worked well for us. I do have to make a weekly grid in order for this to work, but I really don't mind the 30 minutes or so it takes. This way we complete the unit in a week, usually. This week I came down with a cold and we're a little off, but that's okay too

[SarahAngeline]

That's a great idea! Thanks for sharing! =)

PS- I just saw a comment you left on the Practical Homeschooling FB page. Funny. Thanks for sharing your blog with us! It's helpful!

[lissiejo]

Thank you for the encouragement I have loved getting a peak into other family's homeschooling lives so it is encouraging when I know someone enjoys taking a look into ours!

[my3sons]

I just wanted to share that we have done 4 days a week with LHTH, LHFHG, Beyond, and Bigger Hearts through the years and enjoyed it so very much! This has helped my younger sons be on the same school schedule as my oldest ds, as well as give us a day off each week. Doing this makes LHTH through Bigger Hearts take 5 years instead of 4 years. I am thinking your little guy is only 5 yo old right now anyway (please correct me if I am wrong about that), so another option to the one already shared would be to just enjoy the open and go nature of the daily plans and take a little longer to complete the guides. Your ds would be at a very nice age to begin PHFHG then (I believe he'd be about 9 yo then). PHFHG and all of the guides after it have a 4 day a week plan already, so you'd be set then. Just thought I'd throw out another idea for you to consider - options are always nice!

In Christ,
Julie

[Kathleen]

We don't worry about the unit fitting Mon-Fri here, and it truly works great! It seems that it doesn't take very long in a school year for something to make it so that your 5 day week gets messed up (even if you're trying to keep it that way). It could be sickness, a trip to Grandma's, a holiday, field trip...anyway, we just decided that we'll move forward a day at a time and it has worked well. For my oldest we were often completing 5 days per week, but we still didn't end up with day 1 on Monday always. Once he was in Preparing and my younger ones were in LHFHG, we planned on 4 day weeks.

Kathleen