what have we been doing for 7 months?

Ever since the first weekday in September we have laid out stacks of books, written paragraphs, filled out pages in workbooks, read chapters, conjugated Latin verbs, read aloud stories, and memorized spelling words. The children only got off 2 days for Thanksgiving, less than a week for Christmas, didn't take a single snow day, and haven't gone on one field trip during the week. I can't blame pep rallies, band concerts, motivational speakers, standardized testing, fire drills, bomb scares, or the myriad of other interruptions that plague public school teacher's yearly goals. Despite all this, the children's progress ranges from the 5th week to the 28th week out of lesson plans that total 36 week's worth.
Of course the younger children are closer to finishing the year than the older ones, Seton's program is much more lax for the early elementary grades with free days on Fridays and science/history on an alternating schedule. By 6th grade, the lessons sent with enrollment are so thick that it is almost impossible for a child to complete all the assignments in less than 200 days, much less the official 180 days.

I have to recall that this, "How are we ever going to finish by June?" panic occurs every year about this time, and somehow we do manage to complete almost all the assignments around that date. Last year was worse because we joined a co-op that turned out to be a waste, and went on numerous field trips in the Washington, DC area, but here we are in the exact same boat, wondering how we are going to plow through all this work. If I break it down then the anxiety starts to diminish: Timmy has about 10 pages left of preschool, Charlie is doing well except that we began spelling late so he can continue that every day over the summer, Maggie is within a week of finishing several subjects and is almost to the last quarter in everything but spelling, and Mary only has a few weeks of work left for the year besides spelling.

The issue is Will, as usual. He finished his first math text of the year Saxon 7/6 and is now working through Algebra 1/2 with his father so that subject is not my responsibility. He switched to Johnny Tremain for his 2nd quarter book report after the first choice, Men of Iron, turned out to be so dreadfully boring that I didn't even want to read it. But we still have half a year left of reading and English assignments and only 2 official months left to do them in. I really didn't want to spend my entire summer in Maine sitting down inside with this child AGAIN, but it looks like that will be the case.