Why Do You Start Your School Week on Thursday?
I like trying out different methods and schedules with our school work (ACE curriculum) and one year I decided to see what would happen if we did the bulk of our work in the winter and had a lighter workload in fall and spring. That year we did the entire year’s Social Studies PACEs (workbooks) in fall, the entire year’s Science PACEs in spring and the whole year’s Math, English and Word Building during the three months of winter.
If we were going to do all 12 Science workbooks in the 12 week Spring term, we needed to do one workbook per week. Each workbook is divided into three sections followed by a checkup (quiz.) At the end, there is a Self Test (practice test.) The day after the Self Test, there is a real test. (The same is true for all subjects.) That meant it all broke down nicely into five days’ work.
Now to the point of our schedule…
During that period, we had Cub Scouts on Tuesday afternoon and Story Hour at the library on Wednesday mornings. Since those two days of the week were partially taken up by activities, I wanted to do the two short school days on Tuesday (Self Test day) and Wednesday (Test day.) That meant that the rhythm for our week became Thursday being the start of new PACEs and Wednesday being the end of the PACEs. Since we always announced 100%s and did rewards the day after tests, it just really felt like Thursday was the beginning of the new school week.
Even though it’s not necessary, we continue to stick with it. When school starts on Thursday, we feel like we only have two hard days of school before the weekend. We come back on Monday and have two more hard days of work until Wednesday which remains Library Day for us. Once a month it’s Field Trip day, too. The kids do regular school work on Wednesdays still, but it feels like an easy day.
Anyway, that’s how our Thursday-Wednesday school week got started and it will probably forever remain.
Anway, that’s how our Thursday-Wednesday school week got started and will probably forever remain.
