Moving at Your Child's Pace
In the homeschool, your child should be allowed to move at a pace that remains challenging, yet allows for thoroughly grasping concepts and skills. Unlike a traditional school, it's not necessary to keep all lessons moving along on the same time schedule. In other words, you needn't feel that you must complete a history lesson in thirty minutes, a science lesson in thirty minutes, math and English each within a thirty-minute time frame, then repeat the process again tomorrow.
If you find it necessary to skip certain lessons for a few weeks and go back to them later, note the fact in your lesson plan book or mark the pages with sticky notes. You don't want to reach the end of the school year and realize you forgot to cover some of the lessons.
If your child can do his English lesson in thirty minutes, that's fine. But if he has difficulty in math, struggling with ratios and percents, for example, then the time allotted for math class may need to be extended. In fact, there's nothing wrong with spending a couple hours learning a new concept, as long as your child is inclined to do so.
If he simply cannot make sense of the lesson today, then it's okay to set it aside and work on it another day. A couple weeks from now, he may be able to comprehend the relationship of ratios and percents more easily.
