Monday, September 5, 2011

Scheduling

It seems there is something going on here in the blog-o-sphere: everyone from every different niche of blogs seems to be posting their schedule.

I am linking up with one of my favorite bloggers, Rachel at finding joy to write about how I try to schedule.  If you do not read Rachel's blog, please check it out...she writes about finding joy in all kinds of moments, amidst the chaos, of our daily lives.  She always helps me to look at things differently!  (And she is really, really nice and we have great twitter conversations!)


Ok, so the schedule...

I am most effective when I write down a to-do list.  This works best if I do it the night before.  After dinner is done, while the girls are doing the dishes, I usually look around the house and decide what I want to get done the following day and make a list.  Anything that I had on the list for the current day that did not get done goes on the list as well.  {Once this is done, I can relax that things WILL get done the following day and hit my bed with my book!  Booyah!}

As my girls are getting older, they are helping more and more around the house and I have been considering starting a notebook for each of them as well.  Their notebook would include household chores as well as school-related things and any outside lessons/classes for the day.  Eventually they will do this for themselves.

I like the smaller notebooks for my list because I keep my grocery list in there, I have a section of Christmas or Birthday gift ideas and if we are doing some kind of project, I have price and model comparisons in here.  The smaller notebook easily fits in any purse.


Despite the fact that I said I don't plan for school and it's a waste of time because we never stick with it, I have spent the last few days planning.  It could be the fact that I can control this and right now, the Tropical Storms that are bombarding the area where we live, are making me feel powerless.

Basically all I did was set weekly goals for our subjects.  I did this for the entire year because I am insane so that I can see when we would finish our curriculum.  I left ample time for exploration.  I put recommended reading books on hold at the library using the "suspend" feature so books should arrive when I need them.  How cool is that?  If only we follow this! Ha!


Christine at Fruit in Season shared her School Planning strategy and I loved the notebooks that she keeps for each of her kids.  I am planning to try doing the same for the girls, with their school work, other chores and outside classes for each day.

This year, I will be working ALL DAY one day per week.  My plan is to go over Writing with Ease and Story of the World with P before work and then assign her independent work in math, grammar, copywork, etc.  A will be doing Language Arts and Story of the World independently on the day she is at work with me and possibly other days as well...we'll see how it goes and how we feel most comfortable/happy.  The girls will do grammar and some other things independently while at work with me.  Writing with Ease uses a four day week approach, so we are hopeful to have one day a week for field trips or reading days :)  The girls will do Math and Language Arts four days a week and two days a week we will immerse ourselves in Biology, the other two days we will immerse ourselves in the world of Medieval Times.  

I am relieved to say
 that we are starting school THIS WEEK 
and I am READY!