Mini-Term

This past weekend, I sat down with our map and grammar books and determined when we would finish them based on our current rate of completion. It turns out we will finish both books by the end of March. Back in October, when I decided to move through the curriculum faster than it dictated, I knew we would finish early, but I never figured out exactly what 'early' meant.

In my gut I figured we would be finishing up these books about now and then I would just order the next book in the series and we would keep going. I think that intuition did not take into account that we really didn't start school until the middle of October. When I counted out exactly what early meant, I questioned whether or not we should buy more books and keep trucking. It seems like a good opportunity to do something entirely different for a mini-term of two months.

Now what should we do?

For Grace our subjects are math, grammar, flute, map workbook, and handwriting, along with whatever she is reading and a bit of writing.

For Olivia our subjects are math, reading, map workbook, and handwriting, along with a bit of writing.

We have a once a month art class, they go to Grandma's for cooking and sewing once or twice a month, and science is pretty much contained to watching nature documentaries while I try to snatch a moment of sanity. I also started reading Story of the World with them because the last school day in January is a perfectly normal time to begin history for the year.

If we will be dropping the grammar and the maps for April and May, what would be a good replacement? The girls really love the maps so some kind of geography suggestion is not out of bounds.

Some ideas are: bird study, music theory, something more sciency than watching TV, and US States.

Any other suggestions? Or are some of my ideas too big to tackle in eight weeks?


An aside: I feel much less angsty about this less than rigorous academic year with Olivia than with Grace. Everything you read says elementary school can be pretty laid back, but middle school is where you start getting really academic. So with Olivia, I am perfectly relaxed with what we have done, but with Grace, it is hard to suppress that inner voice screaming, "YOU HAVE SKIPPED AN ENTIRE YEAR OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY!!! And what about language. And she should be reading higher quality literature. And she should be writing more. And. And. And." I know, intellectually, we made the best choices for us overall, but that irrational feeling of missing key components and running out of time in later years is hard to silence.