Scheduling Our Days: Part Two

I am frequently asked for specifics as to how I schedule my children’s school days. I wish you could read my color-coded schedule! I’ll try to explain what I am doing with my children as best as I can. Be forewarned: this is a loooooong post, full of potentially nauseating detail. It is written lovingly, for those who adore talking about schedules, as I do! For the rest of you, feel free to look away now!

Variable time blocks

I allow my younger boys (preschool, 1st and 3rd grades) to sleep in so I have 1/2 hour to work alone with my 7th grade son, Jack. He and I start at 7:30 sharp.

During that 7:30 time slot we do something different every day. Mondays we go over his new math for the week. Tuesdays I dictate new spelling words. This enables him to continue in both of those subjects for the rest of the week with very little help. On Wednesday mornings we will be listening to a sermon tape this year as we work through R.C. Sproul’s Bible Overview From Dust to Glory. Thursdays we will do Logic, and Fridays he gets to sleep in for an extra half hour.

The “variable time block” has been a key to making all our week’s work fit into our busy schedule. I use it a lot!!

Staggering

At 8:00, Jack starts his math on his own, while I get the younger boys up, serve them their breakfast, and do a quick straightening job in the kitchen. The boys are expected to get dressed, eat, and do their morning chores before Family Worship starts at 8:40. My husband is able to join us for about the first 20 minutes, during which time we have our Bible reading and sing a hymn or pray. Next, we do history from 9:00 to 9:30.

Our Tapestry of Grace curriculum will be great this year, as our study of Ancient Cultures is being done in conjunction with lots of Bible. I am hopeful we may be able to read through most of the Bible as a family this year. During History, we plan to do some history reading, work on our Bible timeline, color pages for their notebooks, and talk about their Bible/Worldview questions. Some days, my oldest will be a part of this, but typically he will not.

He has a lot more reading to do than the younger boys, so he will usually start working alone at 9:00 while I do grammar level history with the youngest 3. While I am reading, they are usually coloring something for their history notebook, playing quietly with school-related toys (Egyptian soldiers or Noah’s ark, Bible felt set) or sitting by me, looking at the pictures.

At about 9:30, history is done and everyone goes their separate ways. Knox (3rd grade) and I will work on spelling together, while Colin (1st grade) plays with Cal (3 yo). At 10:00, Colin has spelling/handwriting and reading (him reading aloud) with me. Knox reads alone, and Cal plays by himself in the school room near Colin and I.

During this entire time, Jack (age 12) has been reading alone. He may have started as early as 9:00 if he wasn’t involved in the little boys’ history. Typically, he starts his reading alone at 9:00 every Monday and Tuesday, and I save any read alouds or discussions that I want to do all-together until later in the week. This is to give Jack as much time to read as possible at the beginning of the week, so that he will be prepared for his History and Worldview discussions later in the week.

At 10:30 Jack takes a 30 minute break to take Cal outside. I use that quiet time to work with the younger boys. Knox and I will do his Grammar and he will also read to me during this time slot. Colin will take a very short spelling quiz, which he can do on his own using our Spell to Write and Read CD’s. He listens to the appropriate track on the CD and writes the words. I will check the words when he is done and then he can play with Jack and Cal.

Snacks

I keep snacks (dried fruit, granola bars, string cheese) on hand that the kids can grab around 10:30 if they get hungry. At 11:00 Knox and Colin both do math with me. Cal will sit at the school table and “do math”, too. He has his own bin of manipulatives, math books, dry erase board, etc. He loves to “do school” if he can use real tools like the big boys. If he would rather play, he is free to do that, too. Usually Knox and Colin can work alone on their math (after learning new material on Monday) and I can spend this time doing a preschool activity with Cal.

Jack has another variable time slot at 11:00. On Mondays and Tuesdays he works on Geography, which will be labor-intensive this year as he puts together his own transparency map atlas. On Wednesdays he works on a detailed timeline using Homeschool in the Woods figures. On Thursday he is to produce something for his Notebook (a paper map, a paragraph about an event or person on his timeline, some drawings, etc.) and on Friday he will either do a Literature worksheet or take extra time to finish up any History/Geography/Timeline work that wasn’t completed during the week.

From 11:30 to 12:15 we have another variable time slot. Once a week I plan to do a read aloud with Jack (Henrietta Mears’ book What the Bible is All About), Tuesdays and Wednesdays everyone will do History Hands-On Projects together and Thursdays and Fridays Jack and I will have our History and Worldview discussion times. Sometimes Jack and I do our discussions at night, so daddy can be involved. If we decide to do that, we’ll either have more time for hands-on things or we will bump our afternoon work up and have our day end earlier.

During the fall we will have at least another half hour to finish our morning work before recess and lunch, but for this 9-week summer quarter, we are planning to go to the pool every school day. Our summer lunch and recess will be extended, lasting from about 12:15 until 2:30. I’m looking forward to lots of Mommy and Me time in the pool with Cal! In the fall, lunch and recess will go back to our usual 1 1/2 hours.

Mom needs a break

This long lunch break is mainly for me. I am exhausted after a busy morning like this one, and an hour of lunch just isn’t enough. I usually have some chores I want to do, emails to respond to, and often my husband comes home for lunch. So the kids get about an hour of recess, then lunch.

After lunch/swimming everyone has some “reading and rest time”, including me. Usually this lasts for about an hour, but during swim-season it will be shortened to 30 minutes.

At 3:00, the little boys can play for a half hour (Cal naps), while Jack and I go over writing and grammar. His grammar course will hopefully be completed during the first 9 weeks of school. I am only doing grammar review for him this year, as he will start his 2nd year of High School Latin in the fall (an online class). He gets a lot of grammar in that course, and I feel that doing both simultaneously is unnecessary.

Speeding up the pace for some courses

Finishing a semester’s worth of grammar in 9 weeks may mean he will have some homework at night. I hate to give homework at all, but I haven’t found any way to incorporate swimming every day and still have Jack finish all his 7th grade work. This seems to be the only option. Once summer is over, he should be able to easily complete his work during his typical 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. day.

At 3:30, Jack will continue working for another half hour alone on Creative Writing. I am planning to have him do this as an online course, through Write Guide, starting in September. Over the summer, he’ll get his writing assignments from me.

While he is doing writing, I’ll work with Knox and Colin together on another variable-time block. Mondays are Geography work (basic map labeling), Tuesdays we read aloud (literature), Wednesdays is read aloud again (literature), Thursdays we’ll do more Geography (A Child’s Geography by Ann Voskamp) and creative writing (choose topic, fill out a graphic organizer), and Fridays finish their creative writing. The younger boys are still learning to spell and write, so they dictate their creative writing assignment to me. When one is dictating to me, the other is drawing a picture to go with their creative writing page. Then they switch.

Many weeks the younger boys’ literature choices are simple picture books that are quickly read. When a longer chapter book is assigned, I have many options: we spend extra time reading, often before bed and on the weekend or I get the book on MP3 or tape for them to listen to before bed or their oldest brother reads the book aloud to them when I am fixing dinner or we won’t do Child’s Geography that week.

Do some subjects together

At 4:00 everyone does science. Cal enjoys listening and watching the experiments, if he is awake. About 4:45, the boys will have time to play while I start dinner prep. They do evening chores before dinner. Our schedule stops there, aside from our evening family devotions and reading before bed. Tapestry of Grace frequently has movie recommendations, and we usually try to do those at night as a family movie night.

Please keep in mind that this is my plan for the coming year. It follows a similar pattern to what we did last year, but I find that it always needs to be tweaked as we go along.

Be Prepared for Changes in the Plan!

I don’t believe for one minute that this plan will work perfectly in this form. We will be doing this for a few weeks, and then tweaking here and there as problems become clear.

Maybe one child won’t be able to finish his math in 30 minutes, or we’ll find we haven’t built in enough transition time between activities (a common problem with my schedules). Then my little colored schedule boxes can easily be moved here and there until we find a better way and try again. That is why this schedule is done with little scraps of colored paper and sticky tack, instead of being chiseled in stone.

Even though my days rarely run perfectly according to plan, I am happy to have a plan. I know what I am aiming for. And I am confident that all the boys will accomplish a lot over the course of the year, as we try to be faithful to do the work God has put on our plate this year.

We start on Monday. I can hardly wait!