Let’s first consider schools… you know, the traditional, publicly funded kind.  Most schools use textbooks that are hundreds of pages long as their curriculum for each subject.  This is a lot of subject matter to cover in one school year that is typically 180 school days long.  Now consider that a teacher has an average of 45 minutes a day to teach each subject.

We should also consider that school years are frequently organized in cycles so that every other grade level is a “review” year to help students fill in the gaps before building on further.  Most review years spend at least the first half of the year reviewing the previous years.  Now we have cut the available time in half every other year.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that it is impossible for a teacher to get through an entire curriculum in one school year.

But fear not!  As homeschoolers, we have a few benefits over the more traditional schools.

One huge benefit that homeschoolers have over traditional schools is that we have the ability to just keep going.  We are not tied to a school calendar year with assigned breaks.  If our math curriculum is not complete by May, we can continue working on it through June, July, or until it’s done.  Similarly, if you MUST have that summer break, there’s no reason you can’t just pick up right where you left off when your school year resumes.  That is our plan for the 2016/2017 school year.  We plan to continue the Language Arts and Math curriculum I bought for the Princess.

We are also not limited to 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week.  The freedom with homeschooling to take our time and do the work we need to get done as we need to get it done.

I love this about homeschooling over the options a traditional school has.

Homeschool families can (and often do) switch between curriculum during any given school year.  As you probably already know there are hundreds or even thousands of curriculum options.  Sometimes we get started with one curriculum that for all intents and purposes looks perfect only to find later on that is much more in line with our teaching style, or our child’s learning style, or our morals or values.

Kids learn differently at different times in their lives.  What works now for a child may not work in a month or in 6 months.  Also, different kids learn in different ways.  Explode the Code may have worked fabulously for child 1, but doesn’t work at all for child 2.  Different kids bring a different attitude to learning, a different emotional response to their world, a different interest in a new subject.

The bad news is that means curriculum often doesn’t get finished as changes are made.  The good news is that sometimes what goes unfinished for one child could be finished with another.

Probably the most important thing to keep in mind is that moving from one curriculum to another or finishing one grade without finishing the curriculum for that grade doesn’t necessarily mean huge gaps and holes in education.  Most curriculum cycles back around to cover and recover topics.  Most curriculum begins with a review to cover the previous year.  And let’s not forget that there are so many different opportunities for learning- classes and co-ops, life learning and play learning, and just general reading that all contribute to learning and filling in gaps left from unfinished curriculum.

Ultimately, I think if we don’t finish curriculum in one year, I guess it’s ok.  Because sometimes you just don’t.  And we continue educating our children.