Wednesday, January 31, 2018

In Defense of "Too Much Curricula"

I see it all the time - people asking "here's my plan, is it too much?" And, inevitable, many of the answers are a resounding yes. I often disagree, as I think it's the attitude toward schoolwork and education that needs evaluated, not the pile of curricula.

Anyone who has read my yearly resource posts will know that we have a lot of educational materials around here. They fill shelves. Several of them. And they aren't all on the school shelves - they're on my daughter's own bookshelves, they're on the game shelves, they're on the toy shelves...

And that's great for us! We love variety. When I say that I am going to do two language arts programs plus a pile of supplements, a science program plus multiple science units plus xyz else in science, I don't mean that we're using each one of those things every day! Or every week. Or even every month. As a general rule, I don't care when (or, sometimes, if) we finish whatever our "curriculum" is. Sometimes a resource will stay on the shelf for a year or two and then it suddenly fits perfectly with what we want to accomplish. Sometimes we're bored and burnt out (hello, winter!) and want to do something different. Sometimes I see others complaining about how they're dragging through lessons in order to get to the next break, and I'm reaching for something we haven't used in a while and pulling it off the shelf to rejuvenate us.

I love having these options!

This isn't even all the math we're using this year!

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