September has lasted FOREVER

My mini goal for the month was to plan a schedule for the year to determine how many days each of my lessons should take in order to fit everything in, and to give me a quick idea of what each day will consist of. I accomplished my goal! I have a schedule for all 5 grades now. The tricky part is knowing when to adjust the schedule. As Tiffany said in a comment on another post, sometimes you have to go slower to make sure they learn it, and then adjust the next project accordingly. Because I do want to stay somewhat on schedule I think what I will adjust most is the type of artwork students do to learn a concept. I think for 4th and 5th I will be doing fewer large drawings/paintings and more smaller ones that won't take as many days to finish. This way I can spend time helping them learn and also encourage good craftsmanship, knowing that it is a small enough artwork that they will hopefully finish in a reasonable amount of time. In the past they have done some large artworks that take so long that instead of taking time to make sure they are learning the concept I just have them work on the art to get it finished. I struggle with finding a balance between work time and discussion/teaching time. I know it is important to learn vocabulary, think about essential questions, look at art and talk about it. But making art is important to.

How do you balance teaching or "learning" time with time to work on assignments? (Knowing of course that sometimes these things overlap.)