How rigid/relaxed are you with HS-schedules?

[mittmaman]

We have survived our first year of homeschooling...and, nope, we were not THE ONE family for which it was an easy ride...;).

 

But I am finally having a feeling of having it "all" figured out...at least having an idea of a direction:D. (thanks to the ladies on the K-8 board in great part, btw...)

 

The one thing I keep going back and forth about, is my whole attitude towards scheduling.

I am a very structured/organized person in general, so I tend to try to implement a rather rigid schedule...which almost never works out (...well, there might have been a day or two...).

This is rather frustrating, as I hardly ever have a feeling of us working efficiently.

I am now torn between going with the flow of each day (concerning a schedule and order of subjects, e.g.) and at least having a "base structure": if not a timetable, at least an "order"...

 

How do you handle these issues?

Do your hs-days look very much alike?

Do your kids know what comes next?

 

Thank you so much for your insights...

[Gwen in VA]

My kids entirely self-schedule starting around 6th grade. So they know what comes next -- what they want to do next!

 

If a few days pass and the child is having problems getting work done, I'll intervene and set some priorities, but otherwise it's up to them when to practice, when to do math, when to do chores, when to read the comics, when to do writing, etc.

 

We do have som rhythm to the day -- read-aloud for the younger ones happens right after lunch, I work exclusively with my youngest near the beginning of the day, we go over multiple-kid-together-work after read-aloud, etc.

 

I have always been so impressed by the moms I know who stick to their managers-of-the-home schedule!

[Trivium Academy]

I know if I got up at 6:30 am every morning and followed a sequence/routine of things to do, things would be better.

 

It happens some days, on others I get up at 7:00 or if I can actually sleep in without the dog nudging me or my adorable ds4 telling me it's time to get up, I consider that a blessing!

 

6-7 am wake up everyday, by 8:00 we are doing lessons. I prefer 7:30 but 8:00 is the time that makes me feel bad.

 

There are days that we take cleaning/playing breaks in-between a few of our lessons.

 

I tried to be rigid but with ds4, it's hard. If I wake up before him, it'll wake him up and he'll be cranky (no naps). I also can't seem to go to bed at a good time. I try for 10-11 but it's usually 12 and sometimes 1.

[keptwoman]

We've only been going 18 months. I tried scheduling with timetables and it lasted about a day. Then I tried a given order and that lasted a month or two.

Now I give each of my boys a list of what they need to acheive in the day. They tick it off as they do each item.

6 out of the 7 items C's list can be done in any order he chooses. The main topic for the day (Science or history) is done last with me. I put out everything he can do independently the night before.

J works largely independently, referring to me when he needs help.

It works well for us, enabling the boys to work at their own pace and get done what I want them to in a day. C often gets up and knocks off maths and copywork before I've even dragged myself out of bed. He's an early bird.

[CookieMonster]

I'm one of those poor souls who simply won't get things done if there isn't a plan. I get exponentially more done when there is.

 

Scheduling anything becomes easier the more familiar you are with it. You tend to know, from experience, how long something should take and might take depending on various circumstances. Using those two measures, you should be able to put together a schedule that is doable, but can handle the occasional off day.

 

A way of scheduling that works for me is a basic time outline and a checklist. Let me explain.

 

A schedule-schedule, as I call them is set up like this:

 

8:00 Math

8:40 Science

9:20 Reading

9:40 snack

10:00 Grammar

etc.

 

This is the kind of schedule I can never seem to actually follow.

 

An outline-checklist schedule goes like this.

 

I will start school by 8:00.

Here are the subjects that I need to complete every day: Math, Science, Grammar, Reading, Latin, Spelling, etc.

I'll break for snack around 9. We'll eat lunch at 11:30.

 

There - that's the schedule. I start at a certain time and complete the list as I go. The only rule is to keep plugging away at the list until it's done. I actually, physically check things off when they are completed.

 

But, I also add things like:

Because I know Math takes the looooongest with my oldest, we will do math first every day.

 

HTH

[angela in ohio]

I posted about this in another thread:

 

"You need to honestly decide what type of homeschooler you are and then use a system accordingly. If you know you can trust yourself to get through it all with a loose plan, then you can use one (or none at all.) If you would get behind, you might look at a year's plan that is more detailed.

 

Don't go too far over the other way (we'll never have a single sick day and we'll school right through Christmas! ;),) though. It takes a few years and a lot of honesty with yourself to come up with the right plan." :001_smile:

 

In the early years, when we were very active outside the home, I found a schedule that worked for us. I scheduled each curriculum separately and set a certain number of those lessons to accomplish a week. Some weeks I made the goal, sometimes I went over or under a bit, but I didn't have to rewrite my whole plan. My planner was just one or two sheets of paper for each subject and a calendar. I ahve a different system that works better for us now, as we have more regular days, but if you need more flexible days, it works well.

[Closeacademy]

How do you handle these issues?

I like to have a plan in place and have school pretty much pick up and go. My problem comes in when I have to adapt curriculum to fit my children's needs.

 

What I have done to deal with the whole--on-track/off-track stress is to schedule out monthly units. Each month we cover a certain amount of work but I schedule it so that by the end of the month we may be running short which helps us if we do get behind because we still have plenty of time to catch up.

 

For example: This month we did long division which took a lot of brain power so there wasn't much left over to do both Latin and Science. So we finished up Latin and we will spend the rest of this week and next on Science.

 

 

Do your hs-days look very much alike?

 

I try to mix up our days but have a certain order. That way we don't get bored.

 

Basically they look like this:

 

Read Aloud--Mon is Fable, Tues and Wed is STOW

 

Phonics--Mon & Wed is introduction of phonogram & sounds, Tues & Thurs we make lists of words that use that phonogram.

 

Copywork--Mon & Wed copy silly phonogram sentence.

 

Composition--Tues compose, Thurs copy

 

Math--we work in the text and workbook (we generally spend a month on each concept like Jan was place value, April was long multiplication and division)

 

Latin--we do a bite-sized piece of Minimus each day (we spend a month on each chapter and do all the worksheets).

 

Science--we do a bite-sized piece of Singapore Science each day (again we spend a month on each concept)

 

McCall-Harby Test Lessons in Reading on Thurs.

 

Fridays are our enrichment club, playgroup and library day.

 

Do your kids know what comes next?

 

Pretty much. They like variety but they also like to know what to expect and really want the subjects presented in a certain order each day.

 

 

 

Now, I will tell you that I schedule out my year in advanced but at the beginning of each month I evaluate and type up our plan to make sure that it is still fitting our needs. Basically, we have a plan but we go with the flow and don't stress out if our plans drift off in another direction we just get out the notepad and put together another plan.

 

Good luck.:001_smile:

[KarenC]

I schedule appointments and outings on our day off and that helps us keep to a routine.

 

My oldest is 11 and she has a written list each day of what she has to complete. I mark the subjects we do together and the ones she does alone. She starts her "alone" subjects while I am doing math with her younger sisters. She likes knowing what is expected each day and the freedom to work on what she wants.

 

I will start giving my 9 year old her own list in July when we start a new school year. She probably won't have as many "alone" subjects though.

My 6 yo and 9 yo do science and history together.

 

We don't really have a schedule set in stone, but we do have a routine that is not often deviated from.

 

 

Thanks,

Karen

[Hikin' Mama]

I can be rigid, because I tend to be anal about things. :tongue_smilie: But I've learned that rigidity usually causes unhappiness for all of us. I've been homeschooling 11 years.

 

I think that structure and consistency are good. It's good to have a familiar flow to the day, but realize that sometimes that flow will be interrupted. I think it's good to try to be consistent though, and be very selective about your reasons for interrupting the flow.

 

Does this make any sense? :confused:

 

Kim

[Pamela H in Texas]

We do better with progress charts rather than a schedule. So we have the week's work figured out and then just mark off each one so we can visually see where we are in the day and week.

 

When my kids were younger, I decided what the work was and they followed through. My son now uses a virtual academy so someone else decides the work and he follows through. My daughter has, for years though, taken my very basic structure (such as, "get through page 216 by the end of next month") and created her own checklists.

 

They each have a big white board with the subjects written down the side and they record their progress. My daughter just uses checkmarks for each subject. My son writes how long each subject took him.

 

Anyway, though I'm a planner, I'm not an "order" person. Now, had I had 6 school-aged kids rather than 2, I probably would have had to do differently in order to meet everyone's needs appropriately. But I found I could jump back and forth between 2 pretty easily. Even 3 or 4 might have worked. 6 would have made me change at least a little :)

[Jenny in Atl]

I'm fairly relaxed but we school year-round. Also weekends and nights (depending on the weather and time of year) are also game if we fall behind.

[Linda in NM]

For children your age, I'm very flexible with scheduling...if we liked a read-aloud book, we would read it, or watch the whole video, or go to the zoo...Now, I'm moving toward Carnegie Units (45-minute periods for afternoons) for 9th grade, following mornings with Trisms' Ancients--which includes history, timelines, research, and IEW for writing (as well as a couple of minor language arts programs)...afternoons will be CUs for Latin, Algebra II, German, and Science...

[anewday]

 

A schedule-schedule, as I call them is set up like this:

 

8:00 Math

8:40 Science

9:20 Reading

9:40 snack

10:00 Grammar

etc.

 

This is the kind of schedule I can never seem to actually follow.

 

An outline-checklist schedule goes like this.

 

I will start school by 8:00.

Here are the subjects that I need to complete every day: Math, Science, Grammar, Reading, Latin, Spelling, etc.

I'll break for snack around 9. We'll eat lunch at 11:30.

 

There - that's the schedule. I start at a certain time and complete the list as I go.

 

Ditto!

 

This is what works for me also!

 

We follow a more CM approach, so I try to keep lessons relatively short (except Math).

 

My oldest's routine (as an idea):

Session 1 (9:00-11am)

Math (60)

Music (30)

English (20)

Spelling (10)

 

Short Break

 

Session 2 (11:20-12pm)

Literature (20)

Latin (20)

 

 

Lunch Break

(Lunch, outside play)

 

Session 3 (2-3:30pm **I have a toddler so we schedule this late to get work done during his nap**)

History or Science (30-60)

Family Reading (20)

Quiet reading/handicraft/typing practice/nature walk etc. (30+)

 

For me, it helps to have a chunk of time set aside to do XYZ. By experience, I know how long X will take, how long Y will take etc...generally speaking (and I note that in the parenthesis just as a guage but not as something that is set in stone). To set the day up around those "chunks" makes a huge difference for me.

 

It helps to have goals in chunks as it makes the school day more manageable. Technically, I still have times broken down, but just having them "noted" behind the subject instead of in front works wonders! :smilielol5:I think it's a deep rooted, distrurbing, subconcious "issue" I have with numbers or something....LOL

 

(And yes, I know I'm odd. :tongue_smilie:)

[LibraryLover]

Weeeellll. Um, relaxed. Very relaxed. But a tremendous amount of learning does take place. Seiously. Kid you not. :D

[Jenny in Florida]

. . . a general (though kind of flexible) daily routine, but which specific assignments get done in what specific order and at what time(s) may change from day to do.

 

So, for example, my 10-year-old son does things in this general order most weekdays:

 

Gets up.

Eats breakfast, often while I read aloud.

Takes shower and gets dressed.

Sits down to desk work.

Does math first.

 

From that point on, he has a lot of freedom to decide what to do next and in what order. We usually take Wednesdays off from desk work. So, the only requirement is that he be done with half of his assignments for the week by the end of Tuesday. Otherwise, he has to work Wednesday to catch up.

 

For example, his assignments for this week included:

 

4 Math Lessons

130 pages of history and literature reading

3 pages of English grammar

9 pages of science reading across four books

3 pages of Latin plus two worksheets

3 pages of Spanish

1 story from Children's History of the World

1 composer bio from Lives of the Musicians

1 Themes to Remember piece to learn

 

So, each day, he would need to do more or less the following:

 

1 math lesson

32-33 pages of history/literature reading

2-3 pages of science reading

Most or all of a page of English grammar

Practice the Themes to Remember piece

2-3 of the following: page of Latin text, Latin worksheet, page of Spanish, CHOW story, Lives of the Musicians bio

 

With the carrot of having one day per week of light or no desk work, this flexible approach seems to be working pretty well for us this year.

[Christi/NC]

I have toyed around with every kind of schedule there is to come to what works for me now.

 

We start school at 8am each day. It's a push to do it but everything runs better if we start on time. The day gets away from me pretty quickly if I get on the phone first thing or start to do household stuff.

 

The kids (I have 5) all have schedules (Excel sheets) with each days work planned out for each subject. They know weeks in advanced what math lesson they have on any particular date. I plan those out for about 10 weeks each time. Making the schedules takes time but it's time well spent. If science is scheduled, I can't skip it. I never used to schedule the peripheral subjects like science, PE, Spanish, etc. and somehow there was never any time in the day to do them. They were the subjects that never got done. My schedules are just lists of subjects and assignments in those subjects. The kids are free to complete them in any order they wish. I don't have timetables. I'm not that organized! :-)

 

I am flexible in that I build in lighter days if I know we have an event coming up or give the kids random days without a math lesson. The kids can work ahead if they want to take a Friday off. We can rearrange things if one of them gets stumped on a math lesson and we need to spend more time on it. The other lessons get bumped and the schedule is changed to reflect that. I build in vacation days and holidays so that we can have breaks during the year.

 

When the kids were younger I was a lot more relaxed but as they began to hit highschool and had full school schedules, work, volunteer opportunities, etc., I needed to have something more rigid to work from. Gone are the days that I call off school because I'm tired or I need to run errands. In our house it benefits all of us to stay on schedule and get things done as planned.

 

FWIW, my kids are 18, 16, 14, 12 and 10.

 

HTH,

Christi

[WTMindy]

I tend to be pretty structured. I really can't stand schedules though. But, I have checklists that must be completed each day (or week). It is rare that I don't complete everything on my checklist, but some days it takes us a long time and some days it takes shorter. It depends on many factors. I would not be able to do a 9:00-9:30 type of schedule. I would get frustrated when we got knocked off our schedule. I do have a few things that I schedule so that I make sure we do it. History projects happen on Mondays at 2:00 (my neices come over).

 

You really have to play with it and find what works best for your family.