Every family is so different when it comes to their homeschool schedules, but we all like to hear what everyone else is doing anyway.
A while ago, I started thinking a lot about our schedule and the ever-present question, "Am I doing enough?"
I took a while to digest the question before I tried to answer it.
I knew that strict schedules didn't work for me or my family. I took a couple of weeks to observe what did work for us and to think about how we could be more efficient and productive with our days.
I concluded that we need a lot of flexibility in our family, but it is nice to have a structure to follow.
I looked at our natural rhythms and how everything fit around naps and mealtimes. Then I took these rhythms and wrote them out into a framework.
Here is the schedule that we have been following for the last couple weeks. It has transformed our lives (without changing them very much.)
I know it won't work for your family. Like I said, every family has their own rhythm.
(Times are flexible, of course.)
7:00 Wake up and take care of personal chores. (get dressed, pick up room, brush teeth)
8:00 Eat breakfast.
Devotional--Read and discuss a Bible story and work on memorizing our poem of the week.
(9:00 MWF-exercise)
10:00 Snack and Free learning time (pretty much anything except computer/friends)
11:00 ROW to Know (I made this up. It stands for Read or Write to Know. I work on my novel while the kids read or write quietly.)
12:00 Lunch/Discuss what everyone learned during ROW.
12:30 Read-Aloud
1:30 Weekly Worky (M-make bread, T-dust and vacuum, W-clean bathrooms, TH-Mop/Clean windows)
Free Time
5:00 Prepare for dinner
6:00 Dinner
7:00 Journal of Gratitudes and Inspirations
Scripture Study
7:30 Bedtime
It's interesting. I hate being stuck to a schedule. We have very few activities scheduled on the calendar. I like to be free to do whatever we are inspired to do, but it's nice to have a framework, too. It's nice to have a rhythm to fall back on or to throw out the window when we feel so inclined.
I'm hoping that if I have children, I get to homeschool them, so this schedule is a great idea. Something I'll bear in mind nearer the time. Glad it works well! (Like how you get religious readings into the day too).
ReplyDeleteSo I'm coming out of lurking mode. :) I found your blog about a week ago, I think from the new Latter-day Homeschooling site. I'm a fairly new homeschooler to my 3 kids (although my oldest is not quite 5 1/2, and I have a 3 1/2 year old and 5 month old, so I'm really mostly just focused on the oldest right now from a schooling perspective). I really appreciate you sharing your schedule. I've really been working on creating more structure in our lives (at the same time that I've been scared of becoming too structured). But I'm finding that having more structure actually helps us to get more done, especially the things that are most important. Reading your schedule has helped me realize that I don't have to do things the way I thought they "should" be done if there's a way that might work better. For instance, I keep feeling like we "should" do story time in the morning but when I saw that you do your read-aloud after lunch I thought, why not? Who says we have to do that in the morning? After lunch sounds like it will fit in much better for us.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I appreciated your recommendations for a couple of books - I just finished reading Mrs. Mike. What a fabulous book! A love story that made me fall more in love with my own husband. :) And I've just started The Robe. I can't wait to read more.
Welcome Maile! I hope your scheduling goes well. I have found that it's best to look at how your days go naturally, and then fit everything in to the rhythm and flow of the days. Good luck.
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