Here we are at the end of October, and Greg and I are rearranging our homeschool day for at least the third time.
While I am fully aware we will never find the perfect flow, I am certain that we can find something that will work well for our family on a consistent basis. For a season, anyway, right?
We started this school year with a pretty structured schedule. We went for 3 or 4 weeks with something slotted for almost every 30 minutes, and sometimes every 15.
That seemed to serve it's purpose for transitioning us from summer into a new school year and we began to relax it until finally, we arrived at the point of having NO schedule. Barely even a to-do list!
This week, after a day or two of off and on discussion, I handed Greg a pencil and paper and said, "You make us a schedule!"
To really appreciate this, you should know #1 - I love planning and making schedules and the like. Love it. It is what I do. #2 - Greg isn't even here during the day. He leaves well before breakfast and gets home just in time for supper.
But I trust him, and his ideas for how this home should be run, so off we went. This is what he came up after only a couple of adjustments from me:
5:30 - Wake up (Mama)
5:45 - Exercise
6:15 - Shower
6:30 - Personal Bible Time
7:00 - Start breakfast / Internet time
7:30 - Breakfast for boys (waking them up if not up already)
8:00 - Morning Red Zone (chore time)
9:00 - Memory verse box and Bible Time
10:00 - Play time (Nap for Tyler)
10:30 - Math for Dale, Preschool activity for Alan
11:00 - Lunch (wake Tyler after 1 hour of nap)
11:30 - Afternoon Red Zone (chore time)
12:00 - Play
12:30 - School (Subjects here will vary)
1:30ish (earlier if possible) - Read aloud
2:00 - Rest/Naptime (naps for Mama, Alan, & Tyler, reading for Dale)
You can go here to see our schedule from August. Looking over it just now, I see that this new one is actually very similar, only simplified a good bit.
This change in schedule comes hand-in-hand with a shift in our schooling goals and priorities. Hopefully I will be blogging about that within the next week.
So, is it just me, or do you change how you do what you do every time the wind blows? Have you found The Thing yet? Or are your 'seasons' as short as ours? And please, do tell.... what would happen if you handed over the scheduling pen to your husband?
P.S. Our new schedule was made on Tuesday evening. Our first time through it was Wednesday (it went well) and then this little thing called the World Series came along and 4 out of 5 stayed up way past their bedtimes. New schedule to resume asap.
yep, we go through the same thing. I love schedules, and we stick to them for a while, then we get very relaxed (and get less done), then we go back to scheduling again. :)We started out this school year with a schedule, but now we are more into a routine. I never thought about asking my dh to make one up for me. Maybe I'll try that.:)
ReplyDeleteHmm...I wonder what the statute of limitations is on using a newborn as an excuse? 'Cause I can tell you that if I'm up at 5:30 it's just to nurse the Little One and we both go back to sleep.
ReplyDeleteI love schedules too, but we have a pretty loose one around here. Maybe we're more of a "to-do list" family. We know what needs to be done in a day but we're flexible about when those things happen.
Our schedule changes every few months. And, it was VERY hard after Judah was born to follow any schedule at all.
ReplyDeleteI did what you did (handing it over to Brian) a month or so ago. He waaay simplified things for me. He used a chunk of time, instead of the 15 - 30 min blocks I had...which just made me feel like a failure every time we got behind.
I look forward to reading about the 'changes' that are taking place in your school. We are struggling to be SIMPLE Classical, slightly Charlotte Mason homeschoolers...it works for us...it's every one else that acts like we're crazy :)
So happy you're able to blog again.
I love the pictures in this post! You guys are all so cute! :)
ReplyDeleteOh, and congrats on the early morning exercise! I need some of that! What are you doing?
looks like an excellent schedule! We are similar, we had quite a rigorous groove at the beginning of the year and have since lapsed quite a bit. My husband's hours are changing soon, though, so I'm sure we will switch schedules once again!
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