Scaling Essentials for My Second Year Student

It's the beginning of our third week of Essentials, so Analytical Task Sheets begin. 

Last year was my youngest daughter's first year in Essentials, so I scaled the work down. 

I felt confident doing that, since it's my eighth year of Essentials and she is the third child I'm taking through this program. 

I knew there would be time to do more in years 2 and 3 of the program. 

So last year, we did tasks 1-4 with 3 to 4 out of the five sentences each week. 

Of course, we also studied the charts and wrote the papers and drilled math facts for Essentials, and we did all her other homeschool work, too.  

So scaling was a good choice to make the work load appropriate to her age and within everything else we were doing. 

But as we started on our first Analytical Task Sheet yesterday, we breezed through the first four tasks with the first sentence of week 3. 

So we moved on to sentence two, then three, then four, and even sentence five, finishing all four tasks for all five sentences in about ten minutes!

It's obvious that we need to scale up this year, and not just because it's her second year and there's an expectation that we do more, but because the work is truly easier and so, it's appropriate and fitting and right to take on more. 

Today, day two of our week at home, I plan to go back to sentence 1 and add task 5.

We may do task 5 for sentences 2 and 3 and 4 as well, seeing how far we get within the twenty or thirty minutes we give to Analytical Task Sheets everyday.    

If we manage to finish task 5 for all five sentences before this week ends, we'll probably return to the first sentence and start into task 6, the quid et quo. 

That would be amazing, but I'm also comfortable waiting to add task 6 for next year, the third year, when it will likely be even easier to do so. 

I'm surprised by how fast we went through the first four tasks yesterday and surprised we finished all the sentences so quickly and easily.  

But then again, I've been doing this for a while, and I know how it works. 

We built a strong foundation last year by consistently doing the first four tasks with at least three sentences each week. 

So naturally, this year it is easy to progress on to more, building and scaling-up on that solid foundation we built last year.