Hi, I am new here. I have ordered, but not yet received my Year 2, Unit 2 materials. We will be starting at this point (where we will be chronologically) in January. I would like to try to get two units done in the spring. However, after that I would prefer to do 3 units per year instead of 2. Is there an "easy" way to do this?
Thanks for any help!
Cynthia

I would count the number of weeks you want to school that year mapping out school weeks and vacation weeks. Compare that number with the number of TOG weeks you want to cover. Now you have the number of NO-TOG weeks. Then look at the topics covered. You may see a few weeks that have similar topics that you will want to group together w/o a break. Group 3-4 TOG weeks together followed by a NO-TOG week. During that week you can focus on other subjects or use it for TOG hands on projects or field trips related to the mini unit you just completed.

I did this last year and used the NO-TOG week for my planning and the children to do hands-on fun things that are easily skipped when you are so busy.

That's my two cents.

Hmm. I guess I wasn't super clear. I want to do TOG every school week, but spread it out so that we would only cover 3 units (I am assuming this would be approx. 27 weeks even though I know some units are slightly different than 9) over 36 weeks. So, spending more than one week, but not two full weeks on a week's worth of assignments. Just wanting to slow the pace a bit to only cover three units per year. Does that make sense?

Cynthia,

If I understand your question, you are wanting to do TOG at a 3/4 pace each year starting with Y3 in the fall. Is that corrrect? A normal schedule is to complete 4 units or 36 weeks in a year. So, if you are doing 3 units in a year, you are completing 27 weeks of material in 36 weeks of school. I think you already got that far, just making sure we're on the same page

I think I would start by scheduling 12 weeks for each unit. This is just an easy way to divide up your 27 weeks and I don't think you'll need more than 3 extra weeks in a unit. Rather than just coming up with a formula for teaching 9 weeks of material in 12 weeks, I would look at the topics covered in each unit and decide which weeks could use extra days and do it that way. For example, we are doing Y3 right now. We only spent one week talking about Louis and Clark. If you have Grammar level students, I would think this would be an excellent week to linger for an extra week and do some fun writing and activities. I don't think I could make these decision until I reviewed the actual curriculum. Once you start to map it out, I think certain weeks will jump out at you and you will be able to plan your time.

Hope this helps,
Eia

Yes, this is exactly what I want to do! Sorry to be so unclear at first. We would actually be starting next fall with unit 4 of Year 2. See, what I am thinking is we would have that last remaining unit plus eight more (four each in yrs 3 and 4) for a total of nine. My son will be in grade 7 next year, so I thought we could use the dialectic level materials over grades 7, 8, and 9 and completing 3 units per year instead of 4. It sounds like there is not a real systematic way to do this, but rather we will just have more "cushion." I may change my mind after I see how the pacing goes with our first "trial" unit, which is year 2, unit 2. I can hardly wait for it to arrive! We are going to ease into this using only the history and geography portions this year with an eye to incorporating literature, church history, and writing as well as he moves into grade 7 next fall. I am both excited and nervous!
Thanks for the insight.
Cynthia

I think you will enjoy the cushion. Last year with year one we made it through a little over three units. This year I finished up unit 4 from last year and plan to do the first two of year 2. No, there is no systematic way to do it. But I bet you will have weeks where someone gets sick or you have to go out of town and you need an extra week. In fact, I normally schedule a catch-up week as far as TOG is concerned. We are doing week 5 of the Vikings right now. We just started our co-op and had something else going this week and I knew we wouldn't finish. We leave for Disney next Thursday, so we plan to just finish up week 5 next week.

Christine

We plan 3 units a year. We have 3 weeks off at Christmas and one week off in between units. For the time between March and June we focus on science,poetry and we have done TLP focus guides. The one on letter writing has been wonderful.
It has allowed us to go on rabbit trails more so than I would of allowed, if we were trying to plan a full year. Good Luck!