How to pace homeschool curriculum

Lesson-a-day books: count everything, including tests

Saxon, Teaching Textbooks and most traditional textbooks are built to be done one lesson per school day. The pacing question is simple arithmetic, as long as you count all of it.

Saxon Math 6/5 has 120 lessons, but also 12 investigations and 23 tests, with the first test after lesson 10 and one every five lessons after that. Count only the lessons and you plan for 120 days; count everything and it is 155. On a 144-day year that is the difference between a comfortable fit and running out of school before running out of book.

Teaching Textbooks Math 5 has 114 lessons and 16 quizzes, 130 days in all. Saxon Algebra 1 has 120 lessons and 30 tests, 150 days. Saxon Math 3, which has no separate test count in our catalog, has 140 lessons.

If a book doesn't fit, the usual fixes are to do two short review lessons on one day, to take a test on the same day as a lesson, or to add a fifth math day for part of the year. Pick one and write it into the plan rather than improvising each week.

Mastery books: pace by the week, and expect it to vary

Math-U-See has 30 lessons in each level, from Primer onward. The design is that a child stays on a lesson until they can teach it back, which for most families comes to about a lesson a week. That makes a level about 30 weeks.

The trap is to schedule it as "lesson 7 on Monday the 12th". Some lessons take three days and some take two weeks. Plan the year as roughly a lesson a week with six spare weeks, and check where you are once a month instead of every day.

Minutes-a-day books: pace by time, not by lesson

All About Reading recommends 20 minutes a day and says plainly that lessons are not meant to be finished in one sitting; some take a week or more. Level 1 has 53 lessons, the pre-reading level 78.

So don't plan lessons per day at all. Plan 20 minutes, five days a week, and stop the timer when it goes off, wherever you are. The book finishes when the child is ready. Over a 36-week year that is 60 hours of reading instruction, which is the number to watch.

The same approach suits handwriting, typing, instrument practice and most early phonics: a fixed time, every day, and progress measured in weeks.

Chapter books: decide how many sittings a chapter gets

History and science spines usually come as chapters, and the publisher leaves the pacing to you. That is where most year plans go wrong, because nobody decides how long a chapter takes until halfway through the book.

• Story of the World, Volume 4 has 42 chapters. If each gets four sittings (reading, narration, map work and an activity; our estimate) that is 168 sittings. At four days a week that is 42 weeks, six more than a 36-week year.
• Apologia's Exploring Creation with Zoology 1 has 14 lessons. At about five sittings a lesson, two days a week (again our estimate), it fills roughly 35 weeks, which suits a science-twice-a-week family well.

When a chapter book doesn't fit, change the sittings rather than the days. Three sittings a chapter brings Story of the World to 126 sittings, about 32 weeks at four a week, with room to spare.

Mark what's optional

Most curricula have work you can drop when you're behind: review lessons, extra practice sets, some tests, the second activity in a chapter. Mark those as optional when you plan, not when you're already late. Then a bad month costs you the optional work first and leaves the core of the book on schedule.

Pacing with CircleUp Planner

CircleUp Planner knows which kind each curriculum is. Its catalog has over 200 curricula and levels with their lesson, test and chapter counts, and it paces each one the way it is meant to be used: by lessons, by sittings, by pages, by minutes a day, or to mastery. Where a curriculum's tests are optional, the plan shows them as optional, so you can see what can give when the year is tight.

For each book it shows whether it fits your year, and if it doesn't, the choices: a slightly faster pace that still finishes on time, a later finish date at the same pace, or extra school days. You pick; it lays out the days.

If you haven't counted your school days yet, start with how to plan a homeschool year, then come back to the books.