How to Keep School going all week

Still working on this one!
This year we've been using a 5-day week schedule but I'm seeing the need to revamp it and change to a 4-day schedule. It seems we end up doing 4 days anyway and at least 1 day is a catch-up or errand day.
Also recently my husbands work schedule has changed so that every other Friday he has the day off and obviously it would be nice to be more free from a schedule when he is home.

It is extremely helpful to be able to make cd's of the books we are reading from librivox and take with us if we are traveling. Someday here I will get another mp3 player or maybe (Lord willing) even an ipod! I'm always leery of purchasing higher priced electronics just because of the destructive nature of children......especially mine, but I'm really missing the help of my old mp3 player in getting all of the kids readings done.

If you have and ipod or mp3 player available to you I would highly suggest using it for your kids school readings. I found that my oldest son, who often has difficulties attending to my reading with other noise and distractions going on around him, could narrate back more of a story he had listened to on the mp3 player because the other noise was eliminated.

Don't be discouraged if your schedule seems to need constant revamping and reworking....I have realized that this is just life and our job is to remain fluid in it. Be purposeful in your school time but don't fret the small stuff.

Drop in for a Visit

A "typical" day in our house.

Well, I tried to journal just one days worth of homeschooling to put here but it was one of THOSE days around here today:) So instead I'll run down the basic gist of how 70% of our days go.

To give a bit of background I have 5 children; 3 boys (Tom-7yo, Wes-4yo, Will-2yo) and 2 girls (Ali-7yo, Emi-5yo). We are using Ambleside Online as a curriculum guide and Tom and Ali are in Year 1. I posted our daily school schedule at the end of this post so you have an idea of how our day goes school wise.

My children have always been early birds but since moving them all into 1 room I have trained them to not come out (except for bathroom use) until 7 a.m. so generally that's when our day begins. I am working to instill the habit (again) of early rising in myself so have made it my goal to get up at 6 a.m. in order to have my quiet time and preparation for the day.

Our Morning Routine goes something like this:

• Everyone Dressed


• Beds Made


• Free Play til Breakfast (Emi is my breakfast helper)
  
  

After breakfast we move onto Chore Time:

• Kitchen Chores
  
  


• Room Chores-the older 4 children each have a room assigned to them to clean everyday.

By now in our morning it is about 10ish so we are ready to start our school. I gather all of the kids into the livingroom for our Morning School session. We spend the next 1-1 1/2 hours in this room moving through most of our reading assignments and other group activities. I do require that all of the children stay in this room and for our bible reading, poetry, and preschool readings the 3 non-schoolers must be seated on the couch sitting quietly, after that we move onto the schoolers reading assignments and the younger 3 are free to play quietly in the room.



Morning School Session:

• Say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag


• Sing weekly hymn and folksong assignment


• Read preschool bible story


• Read daily poetry selection


• Read Beatrix Potter story to preschoolers


• Read Bible story (OT) or New Testament passage (Tom, Ali and I are reading through Mark using their new KJV bibles. We alternate days with OT stories and NT reading.)


• Read Scripture and/or poetry memory selection


• Read daily school assignments (this one is flexible and sometimes doesn't get accomplished until later in the day.

Now this may seem like a lot of reading but there are plenty of breaks and diversions throughout and we are very flexible with the order of this list and on some days only accomplish a couple of them.

By now it's time to prepare lunch so we break up in order for me to make lunch and the kiddos to get in some more free play time. Tom is my lunch helper.

After lunch we do our kitchen chores again and then I take a bit of a break before naptime and the rest of school.

Here is what our afternoon generally looks like although not one day is exactly the same as another.

• Will down for a nap


• Quiet Time for kids (each child picks a few toys and books and goes to their assigned room for an hour of quiet, alone play) Computer or Nap time for mom.


• Disciplinary Studies - Math, Copywork, Reading Lesson, Assigned readings


• Computer Time for kids (Each child is allowed 15 mintues of computer play time)


• Read Aloud/Laundry Folding (I am still working on consistently doing this in our afternoon.)


• Quick Clean livingroom, kitchen and hallway floors

That's pretty much it for our day. Some days some of these things get bumped til after daddy gets home but on most days we finish before he comes.

Our evenings are relaxed and full of play and interaction and before bedtime I sit back down with the kids and we read a couple of chapters in our current read-aloud selection.



Thanks for stopping by for a quick and brief visit.

My school schedule was inspired by Lindafay at Higher up and Further In. Previously I had a much more complicated and detailed schedule that was similar to Sonlight's layout. I am loving how simple this format is and how easy it makes my life. I keep this in a binder along with a printout of the weekly schedule from Ambleside. We are in the last few weeks of our 2nd term so I'll be making up a new schedule soon and will be tweaking it a bit.