January 11, 2001 - HOW THE LA VOLUMES WORK CHRONOLOGICALLY

HOW THE LA VOLUMES WORK CHRONOLOGICALLY AND CYCLICALLY
If you are finishing Book 1 at the end of this school year and are using it
with a fourth grader, you will move on to Book 2 after that. If you have a
younger student joining in on Book 2, he will simply join the adventure at
that point. You would not start over for him, because that would either
mean that the older child would have to repeat the same year over again -
or that you would be doing two separate studies for each of your children.
That defeats the whole purpose of the unit study approach. While we
strongly advocate the chronological approach to history (starting at the
beginning) - if you have more than one child at different levels and want
to use a unit study approach, it simply is not possible to ALWAYS do it
(start at the VERY beginning) this way. However, you will still be moving
chronologically - no matter where you start in history - if you follow the
books in the series' order. You will add children to the study as they are
ready and follow along together until the end. Then you will all repeat
the series and those who have finished it completely already will
supplement at higher levels (or move on to a different course of study -
perhaps a little more condensed this time around so they will have a good
thorough review. They should have already gotten a SOLID foundation
through the LA series and will be familiar with much of what is
reviewed/and covered the second time around.) The younger ones will now go
through the series as written, this time picking up what they were too
young for the last time around. They can either follow the series all the
way through again, or branch off and do some supplementing of their own
when they feel they have already covered a period thoroughly in LA.

I know it seems a little confusing - especially if you have lots of
children. But, think of it this way - you will start in the beginning with
Book one and go on through Book five, then start over again. Whichever one
of your kids enters or exits the study (or adds or subtracts from it)
depends on readiness and family preference. The cycle will continue so
that you can cover the span of history thoroughly, but also in enough time
to allow for a thorough review of it later, as well.

My experience has been this: if you go too fast and cover the entire span
of history every year or two, you will never really do get anything out of
it because you will have covered too much - too fast, and you will not have
had time to catch any of the details. If you go too slowly and only cover
one civilization or so per year (I believe) you will not get finished in
time to do a thorough review. I can say this with credibility because it
is happening to us right now! Ryan and I started too slowly - that's why I
wrote the Adventure book(s) differently. I favor the five-year approach so
that you can dig into each period without burning out on it, but you will
be finished in time to get that good review.

Hope this helps and clarifies some things!

Dorian