Week 8...Really??

I was looking at my Curriculum: Next Year page and realized that we have only been doing AO for 8 weeks! It honestly has felt like longer than that! We have completed 161 days for the school year already though :) As for AO we still do not have everything included in our schedules. Even though I may have them listed over there on the sidebar (Books/Resources We are Using for...) we may not necessarily have it down pat where we do such and such every week or twice a week or whatever. We haven't done artist study for a few weeks and we only have done composer study once (maybe twice) since we've started AO. And we don't do poetry. Also, honestly, some of the books that are listed on the sidebar may actually disappear before we are done. We do Shakespeare, though, because the kids really like it. At first Fox wasn't so sure but he really likes it. Tonight while doing his vacuuming he was rehearsing his lines; Lee chimed in with hers; unfortunately, I don't know mine well enough so they said mine for me :)

I want to figure out exams for week 12 so I needed to know where we are. Besides the daily records of what they are doing, I would like to know what they are retaining for the long term, I suppose. When I look at some exam questions however that were put together by other parents that use AO, I am not sure if my kids could answer them! Not sure if I could either. I'm wondering how do the parents using AO compile their exam questions. I do not want to ask the same questions necessarily but I do not want to ask questions that are too easy.

Perhaps I should not be thinking about it right now anyway. Maybe I should wait for a few weeks after 12 weeks to do the exams. Maybe I might skip them this 'year'. I'm not really sure right now.

Looking at the 36 week schedule for Yr5, which I obviously do not follow to a "t", and considering only the books that we are actually consistently using, we are about 2-3 weeks behind schedule. At this rate we will be finished with this year by mid October. Oh, no, scratch that. We are taking all of June off and the last week in July. So, that means we will finish our 'year' the last week in November. What a coincidence! That is when we take off again. June and December (and a few days here and there) are when we have our 'vacations'.

Oh, I am just rambling now! One thing is really nice is that I have almost all of their books for next school year :) Now that's a load off my mind!

And here is a link to see the schedule for school that we recently made up ... the times along the left side are guidelines. We set the timer for the higher time but if we are done before, or for some reason cannot focus or just cannot take another minute, we stop the clock and move to the next thing. There are two sheets (Lee is on sheet 1; Fox on sheet 2), not four but I haven't figured out how to get rid of the extras.