After years of trying different schedules, we have finally found what works best for us.
It isn't a schedule at all.
It's a checklist!
Separate to-do's for me and each boy, tucked into a page protector and marked off each day with a dry erase marker. I hope to devote an entire post to that list some day, but today I plan to live-blog a typical school day for our family.
5:55 - My alarm goes off. I hop out of bed to grab it and bring it back to bed with me. No surprise, there is a kid in our bed. Tyler this time. I already escorted him back to his bed once in the night.
6:15 - No more 'snooze'. Greg is gone on his run. I get up and shower.
6:30 - I sit down to continue my way through the New Testament. Today I'm reading the early 20's of Luke. Greg returns from his run. Dale gets up. I start him on his NT reading (he's starting Acts today) and then his OT reading for school, usually done later. (Today is 2 chapters in mid-Exodus.)
6:50 - Make the coffee and begin straightening the couch/coffee table area. Tuesday was not a good house-keeping day, and Monday was only so-so. I have some catch-up to do today.
7:00 - Greg has gone, Tyler is up, Dale is feeding the calf. Tyler & Dale get breakfast, I empty the breakable clean dishes from the dishwasher and start a load of laundry. Today is a sheets & towels day.
7:30 - Alan is up & dressed, eating his breakfast. Dale empties the rest of the dishes and takes out the trash. Tyler plays with a few stray duplo legos that got left out yesterday.
8:00 - The boys escape to their room to play. I take Alan's morning meds to him, then sit down to start this post.
8:20 - I rally the boys back to their lists and go get Brooklyn. We are in that awkward stage when one nap a day is not enough and two is too many, and the last couple of days that means she's a little sleeping beauty sleeping late in the mornings! Today she is already awake when I go in, and I set her down to her breakfast.
9:00 - Boys have finished their morning jobs and a quick bike ride.
Dale does his math and Alan and I read his Bible story for the day (Prodigal Son). Brooklyn and Tyler play.
9:30 - Tyler's activity today is a almost over his head, but a huge hit with the big boys, so we take time out from their school stuff to play with his.
10:15 - We roll up the road masterpiece for now and get back to the list. Dale does his handwriting copywork, a journal entry, and reads his Bible lesson. Alan completes 3 phonics pages and practices 3 cursive words (sir, sell, rise) on our new handwriting markerboards from Mimi. Tyler does several activities from the preschool drawer and a transportation jigsaw puzzle. Brooklyn makes lots and lots of noise, babbling (loudly!) and whining. Must be held more than usual.
I transfer the laundry and keep everyone on task or out of trouble. Or both.
11:40 - We sit down to a macaroni & cheese w/salmon lunch.
12:00 - As well as things seem to be going it has been a trying morning on my patience. I have griped at the same kid twice for 2 separate (and fairly innocent) spills. I have insisted on silence at times and pleaded for no extra noise at others. So in spite of it being 95 degrees I send the boys outside for a little respite for all of us.
12:15 - Boys come in. It is hot. We all have a cookie. I decide our lunchbreak hasn't been long enough and extend it to 1pm. :)
1:00 - Spend some time with Dale practicing piano. Dale reads while I read to the other three. Brooklyn and Tyler go down for naps; Alan and Dale finish school for the day: Alan - Math, reading. Dale - Spelling, more reading.
I could still use some quiet and unwinding (what's with this day!?) so I start one of my new library books while Dale reads and Alan plays more with this morning's road map.
Alan and I spend some time looking through a jumbo-sized book of Monet paintings. Dale is still reading. He has a good one he wants to finish! ;)
3:00 - Dale joins Alan at the road map. I do some picking up and fold laundry.
3:30 - Tyler is awake from his nap. Snack time, then more road map playing ensues.
4:00 - Brooklyn has been awake in her bed for a few minutes and I can't put off getting her up any longer. We roll up the road map and everyone goes in to see Brooklyn. We start our afternoon cleanup.
4:50 - The beginnings of supper are on the stove and Daddy is home!
Here's what the rest of the day should look like:
Supper between 5:30 or 6:00.
Supper cleanup.
Family play time.
(Today is Wednesday so Daddy will be going to church. Sometimes Dale and Alan go with him.)
Around 7:30 baths and bedtime routines will begin.
By 8:00 (if we are doing good) we will wind down with Alan's evening meds, a family devotion, prayer time, final hugs & kisses, and... soon after that... lights out! For the kiddos. ;)
Daddy and I unwind together with or without the computer or some baseball on tv.
Thanks for following along!
During our summer break, I sat down with my curriculum choices and an idea of our daily rhythms and goals and began one of my favorite tasks: creating a schedule.
There is something so rewarding about starting a school year with a fresh new schedule. This year started out looking just as promising, but then we actually started school.
And I hated it.
Each day was a struggle.
After consulting with my principal (Greg) and my academic adviser (my mom) I came away with a plan so simple and yet, for our house, revolutionary.
Our original schedule set Dale and his academics as priority. I was trying to force things to move along with the assumption that I would get him started on his work and then walk away to do other things, like preschool stuff with Alan & Tyler. But the "other things" were never happening. And I was constantly nagging Dale to get his work done. To hurry up. To pay attention to his business.
It wasn't pretty.
The solution? Turn the day upside down! With a few adjustments we have settled into a fantastic routine that works for all of us!
Short version:
Breakfast, morning chores.
Outside playtime.
Preschool.
Lunch.
Rest time.
Dale's school.
Snack.
Play.
Supper.
Play.
Bed.
Detailed version:
I'm going to list it with times, but they are WAY approximate and can vary an hour or more. 'Kay? 'Kay.
6:00-7:00 Mama up
7:00-8:00 Boys up, dressed, breakfast, and begin their morning chores
8 or 9 - Head outside to play before it is too hot. We usually stay about an hour, depending on how fast it is heating up. This is our only chance, as the temps have been hitting 100 by noon or before for weeks now.
9:30ish - Come in, cool off, finish morning chores.
10:00 Memory Verse Box & Bible Story (on the couch)
Move to table for Alan to color a picture from the story, Dale to draw a picture for his notebooking
page, and Tyler to color (or eat crayons). Dale narrates the Bible story to me.
Preschool activities with everybody, including Dale. We usually read a book or two, do a craft or other activity, sing some songs or do some rhymes.... you know... preschool stuff. We are in our 4th (and final) week of an ocean unit, so most of our activities have centered around that. (Big wrap-up post on that coming up at the end of this week!)
11:30 Ideally I would do a piano lesson with Dale here right before lunch. But we move pretty slow in the mornings and often skip over a mid-morning snack. So lately piano has been suffering while I get lunch ready and the boys play and clean up from school.
12:00 Lunch. Lunch cleanup. Boys play and I sit. Usually at the computer.
1:00 Tyler's naptime. I lay with him on my bed until he goes to sleep. I usually sleep 30 minutes or so, and set an alarm to get myself up. Dale and Alan play not-so-quietly (we're still working on that) in their room.
1:30 (or 2:30) (or anywhere in between, remember?) I send Alan to his bed with books and sit down with Dale at the table. He copies his Bible narration from the morning, then we do his math lesson. That is followed by the rest of his school work. On a good day we finish all this in an hour or less.
3:00 Snack time! Tyler is usually up by this time.
The rest of the day is very unstructured. We usually do a clean-up time about 30 minutes before Daddy gets home, and I cook supper somewhere in there.
That's pretty much how the last2- 3 weeks have gone and it is the best schedule we have ever had!!
We'll see how it holds up after September when baby girl gets here and turns things upside down again! :)
Linking up with:
I don't know about other homeschoolers, but our approach is constantly changing.
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.
It's the final week of the Heart of the Matter Not Back to School Blog Hop, and we're sharing a sample day from our homeschool lives.
Here is how a typical day is supposed to go:
6:00 - Mama is up, preparing for the day.
7:30 - Boys up, eat breakfast, get dressed
8:00 - Red Zone (tidy-up, clean-up)
9:00 - Dale: Bible
9:20 - Dale: Phonics / Spelling
9:30 - Dale: Handwriting
9:45 - Dale: Mon/Wed/Fri - Speech, Tue/Thur - Typing
10:00 - Both: Outside playtime
10:30 - Both: Snack
10:45 - Dale: Math
11:00 - Dale: Mon/Tue/Wed : Science, Thur - Other
11:30 - Dale: Put away school stuff, Play with Tyler if he is awake. Alan: Help Mama make lunch
12:00 - Lunch
12:30 - Red zone
1:00 - Social Studies
1:30 - Dale: Finish any leftover schoolwork, read. Alan: Nap
3:00 - Play
(I schedule Alan's activities in different orders, depending on which boy needs the most help from me with any given assignment.)
Here is how our plans played out last week, the first Thursday of our new year:
6:45 - Boys start waking up. Why? Why, children? You are supposed to be sleeping for at least another half hour. I need to shower before I see your smiling faces. And pray. I must pray before I see any not-smiling faces!
7:15 - Off to an early start, we have oatmeal. Daddy is home - his day is starting unusally late because of a meeting. He heads out the door right after breakfast.
7:45 - With things moving so quickly, Dale and Alan play outside while I give Tyler a bath.
8:00 - Morning Red Zone. It's Alan's potty day! Oh, the joy. My boys love their turn to clean the potty.
9:00 - In spite of the fact that we just straightened the entire house, Alan's watercolor picture from yesterday is missing. And I need it for him to glue some cotton balls on. Now. I suspect it's either been thrown away or is lost in the growing mound of things that need filing that has accumulated this our first school week. I finally give up. I need an attitude adjustment. I wouldn't allow this from the boys. Big breath, and we move along with Dale's Bible lesson. Alan has already begun to amuse himself with other things. We are now running behind on our schedule. Somewhere in all this Tyler screams in his bed for several minutes, protesting naptime. He finally gives up and goes to sleep.
9:25 - Dale begins a phonics worksheet and Alan and I play Boggle Jr. Dale has been promised he can join us when his worksheet is done. Worksheet finished in record time, we play Boggle together. With slight adjustment for age level, this is beneficial to both of them. Yay!
9:40 - Dale moves on to handwriting copywork: a letter to friends he dictated on Monday and has been copying all week. Again, I dangle something fun to keep him moving: typing is next, and he can get to it when the letter is finished. Meanwhile, Alan and I sing the Months of the Year and Days of the Week songs, sing and clap this week's nursery rhyme, and read today's Bible story.
9:55 - Still running behind schedule, Dale begins typing while Alan and I head outside to gather a few things for our next activity. 1 stick, 2 leaves, and 3 blades of grass later we are inside matching up numbers to growing things.
10:15 - The boys head out for a little fresh air, and hopefully run off some energy while they're out there. A mama can hope, anyway. ;)
10:30 - Chocolate pudding for a snack, a special treat, thanks to Alan's next activity....
10:45 - I set Alan up to fingerpaint and practice forming the number '3' with .... chocolate pudding. Dale gets going on Singapore Math.
Tyler wakes up from his nap.
11:00 - We continue our art lesson from yesterday, lines as an element of art. We read Mirette on the Highwire and The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses and notice all the examples of lines in the artwork. We then make our own diagonal line pictures.
11:40 - Early lunch. Ravioli for the boys. Odds and ends for me.
The boys play for a while, then we do our Afternoon Red Zone. Time to empty the can again!
1:00 - We settle in to celebrate National Aviation Day. Dale has been reading about the Wright Brothers, so he tells us a thing or two about them, then we read about another early airplane inventor. This one in France. We follow this with a How Airplanes Are Made video.
1:40 - Tyler is really really needing a nursing and a nap, but I manage to squeeze in one more book about flying before tucking Alan, and then Tyler, into bed for a nap.
1:55 - Sit down, take a big breath. I check email. Dale reads. I do some planning for school.
2:55 - I enlist Dale to help me do a quick pick-up in the living room, and then I take pictures of my living room for the open house post.
4:00 - Blog post is up. Tyler is up. Time to wake Alan up and cook up something for supper! Before I know it, the evening is spent, and we fall into bed for a good night's sleep before it is time to get up and do it all again!
