Homeschool World Forum

This is my first year homeschooling my son. Everything was going fine from August to April. Now I have ran out of stuff for him to do. I did not go with a structured curriculum now I'm wishing that I had. Is this normal or did I go wrong somewhere? I thought about moving him up to the next level but he is already a grade ahead. Well my question is since I'm still new to this should I go with a structured cirriculum next year?

We used a blend of structured curriculum and family created stuff. The Structured stuff we finished 4 weeks ago. In our house Memorial Day is "graduation" from the grade you are in to the next grade. So from 4 weeks ago until then we are doing learning activities. Lots of writing because that is skill I want my daughter to improve upon. Like you my daughter is already over 1 grade ahead and thus we will not start the official 2nd grade curriculum until the fall.

That is the way I handle it.

why not reward your son for her great achievement by letting him pick some new things to study? Go on some neat field trips, and do some interesting unit studies that he wants to learn about. Spend a lot of time outside, we now have three strange pets, one snake, one salamander and a spider. We collect things outside this time of year and I let them do a little research on how to take care of them. YOu could also do some fun home Ec stuff, making cookies, sewing projects, gardening, whatever he is interested in. You don't want him to think that it's a bad thing that he finished early.

Yeah, I'd say let him explore stuff on his own or you can take some of the stuff he has studied more indepth. I don't think a structured curriculum is necessary unless you really want to. There's nothing wrong with expanding his areas of interest and studying them. Have fun with it!

I agree with the other posters here. How about just choosing a topic that really interests him and focus on that, even if it doesn't cover every subject? I have done that the years we finish our school work early. This is NOT one of those years, though.