How Can 4 Day per Week Homeschool Work?

Hi Lee,
My name is Jacci.  I have just finished watching the “Preparing to Homeschool High School” DVDs.  Thank you so much for your support and encouragement!  I have a question regarding specialization.  You mention in the DVDs that you did “regular” school for four days and then on Fridays you would let your sons do things that related to their areas of interest.  I am using Sonlight and right now we are doing the five-day schedule.  If I switched to the four-day schedule and used Fridays for my daughter to pursue her areas of interest would that be enough “regular” school to award high school credit for?  Or should we try to do the five-day schedule in four days?  My only fear with that is that it may be overwhelming for my daughter and may cause her quality of work to slip.

Thanks for your help.

Warm Regards,
Jacci

Hi Jacci,
We used Sonlight as well.  Most of the things my children could finish in 4 days.  We didn’t do it “all” though.  We rarely opened the instructors guide at ALL – we just did the assignments as listed in the schedule, without all the analysis and discussion.    We also did “some” school on the fifth day.  Some of their reading that was on the SL schedule wasn’t something they considered to be work, so they would read that during the 5th day without me telling them to.  They also did a whole math lesson and a whole foreign language lesson on those days.  With Apologia, we could do science in 3 or 4 days a week, and much of the other stuff wasn’t as rigid as the math, foreign language, and Sonlight.

I think it’s VERY important not to overwhelm your daughter, and I think you probably know how much she can take.  Don’t encourage her to do too much so that her absorption of the material slips.  Don’t do what I did, Jacci – do what works for YOU and your homeschool.

Homeschooling in general does allow for enough time for specialization.  As long as she has time for fun, it doesn’t matter if it’s a little bit every day, or a whole bunch once a week (like I did it.)  The other things is that I often see kids doing stuff for fun, for specialization, and the mom is listing it as school.  It IS school, and it SHOULD be put on the transcript.  At the same time, those fun things are specialization,  You don’t have to leave time for more specialization if they are already doing it, know what I mean?

I have my “free office hours” on Wednesday, 1:00 to 2:00 Pacific time if you ever want to talk about it.  I hope I answered your questions completely.

Find out what your missing with my “Preparing to Homeschool High School” DVD.  Almost 3 hours of instructional material and everything you need for a successful high school launch!

Related posts

• Honors Science
• AWANA
• Where do CLEP Exams Go on a Transcript?
• Computer Science Credit in High School
• Should We Take a CLEP Test After Every "A" Class?
• Too Many Credits
• Real Life Homeschool Education
• What Do They Do For Fun?
• Free Bible Curriculum!
• Homeschool High School: Driven Crazy by Drivers Ed!