If It Seems Too Good to be True...

it probably is.

This in reference to my lovely school plan for this week. It looked good on paper (and spread out over the dining room table!), but it turned out to be over ambitious for us to complete in one week. It didn't help, either, that Travis appears to have left his brain at camp and math is taking us forever every day. Yesterday morning I finally bowed to reality and rescheduled half of this week's history assignments to next week.

Actually, I did anticipate this problem with our history program; I just didn't expect it to kick in so soon. This past year we've been doing ancient history, and up to recently I haven't felt the need to add much to what was already scheduled. Next year's history, which we'll start in another six weeks or so, is a different matter. Year 2 covers from the fall of Rome through the French revolution. Not only is that a tremendous lot of history to cover one one year, but there are loads of interesting people, events, etc. in there that that I want to be sure to cover in some depth. I am guessing that it may take us a year and a half to cover the 36 weeks of Year 2.
But this week it didn't seem that I had added in that much! Since Travis loves the Horrible Histories, I knew he'd really enjoy Spartacus. It thrills me when my sweet but not exactly academically driven boy says, "Mom, can I please read another chapter?" So that was an obvious choice (and when he's finished with Spartacus, Boudicca is waiting in the wings). And then I found a biography of Julius Caesar on sale at the homeschool book fair. A chapter on Julius Caesar in Famous Men of Rome was already scheduled, but this book has much more information and wonderfully detailed pictures, so how could I resist? And then I saw Outcast, by Rosemary Sutcliff in the "alternate" suggestions list, and that looked awfully good too. (And yes, I realize that "alternates" technically means something you would do if you were passing on one of the primary recommendations, but how strong do they think I am?) And the kids love Outcast -- definitely Katie's favorite history read-aloud so far this year!

So what is a mom to do? The positive of having one week's work spill over and become two weeks is that it will be that much longer before I need to order the next unit's books; a not inconsiderable advantage!
So there you have it. Since I don't intend to resist the temptation to add biographies and literature as we go, I guess what I need to do is get better at figuring how many books we can really cover in a week. I'll keep you posted!