This is our second year with Tapestry. We began with the second half of year two doing it at "half speed". WE LOVE IT. We are now trying to do one week of material in a week as directed and are currently in week three on Napoleon. I have a two dialectic students and an upper grammar student. The oldest dialectic student often can do Rhetoric material and probably won't revisit the material again...therefore I am trying to cover as much as possible for his sake. We have not added math or language arts yet this year as we ramp up to full speed in school and are barely making it through our assignments as it is. I find it hard to trim the assignments back because the overview is often too minimal doing this. To get down to the nitty gritty: for the current week, my oldest in reading the "Napoleon" 200 page book by Weidhorn, the "Diary of Napoleonic Soldier" book, the 6 page overview from BJU and Oliver Twist. We are reading the "Waterloo" book as a family for the younger ones. To do this along with a map, a timeline assignment (both of which I feel are vital) in addition to a display board on Napoleon has been tough. I am finding myself extending into next week just to have enough time to really cover the material adequately. In other words, having a discussion on Wednesday would have been out of the question. Even the first two weeks were a stretch to get the discussion in by then. Do people really follow this pattern of discussion mid-week and projects/timeline/mapwork later? It sounds ideal, but is it really possible in actuality? I do tend to err on the side of not knowing what to cut , but felt that the Waterloo book and the Diary of Napoleonic soldier book were not enough to read on this topic. I can hardly fathom adding in math and all the language arts next week! Any thoughts from anyone who have taught this material or who has experience with truly covering a week's material in a week?
Thanks,
Michelle

Hi Michelle,
Simply put, your oldest is doing too much reading. With Classic Year-Plans, the idea is to *choose* between assignments. So, based upon the example you've given, I'd have him read either part of the Napoleon book or part of the Diary book, and probably all of the overview. In totality, he should, for a given subject, be reading no more than 100 pages (grade level appropriate) a week. (And that's at the upper end, truly)

No, he won't be reading everything there is to know about a given historical time frame. There isn't enough time in a week for that. However, whatever he doesn't read about, you'll fill in during discussion time. Although you won't have read the book either, you have read the Teacher's Notes and picked out the *main* ideas that you want to make sure he knows.

**Our family discussion is on Thursday afternoon typically. Don't feel bad if you decide to give an extra day until everyone gets in the swing of things.

**You mention projects. As students enter the rhetoric years, it gets more difficult to do hands-on projects. You might consider dropping those for your rhetoric student until he gets a handle on the regular work load.

Hope this gives you some ideas...

Thanks for the perspective. Regarding your comments on cutting back at the older levels on projects. I have used these hands-on projects as evaluation tools instead of tests this past year, using only one test at the end of the year to see how they would handle a tradional test format. If he is writing a paper a week, completing the questions and participating in discussion, should I compile some sort of formal evaluation at the end of each week also? (assuming I cut out some of these projects to make the total load more manageable) I am getting my feet wet with more "serious" homeschooling of a highschooler after having schooled younger kids with lighter weight curricula up until now. I know it is important for them to be accountable in some way for what they have learned whether it be a poster, a lap book or a test. In other words, is an end of unit test sufficient with maybe one bigger project over the course of the entire unit or would you suggest one evalution tool weekly (project or formal test).
Thanks - sorry to be so knit picky - these first days of the new year always seem so daunting! Michelle