When scheduling our year of homeschooling, I consider two parts: 1. a daily order and 2. a yearly plan. Because I think of our daily schedule as more or less an order for our day rather than a strict time schedule, I like to keep it simple. Well, generally speaking I like to keep things simple. 🙂 I do write with times though, because it helps me keep track of approximately how much time we’ll need to complete each subject. It also gives predictability and sets expectations for my littles, which they find comfort in.
Without further ado, here’s our daily schedule for this year —
7:30am Mom wakes up/reads Bible/works out and gets ready
Littles wake up/complete chore checklist/get ready
8:30am Breakfast & clean-up
9:15am Bible Time: Read Bible based on Ambleside schedule, review Awana memory verses, and CC Bible memory work
10:00am Math: Calendar Time as a group
Individual Instruction Time with mom divided into 15 minute increments.
Snacks prepared by mommy for littles to eat as they finish or wait for instruction time.
11:00am CC Memory Review – Monday: CC day, Tuesday: listen to music and build Legos, Wednesday & Thursday: notebooks, Friday: group review The ways we review won’t be strictly scheduled like this necessarily, but it gives me a rough outline to follow. By limiting myself to these forms of review, in general, it will make it easier for me to maintain.
11:45am Science Reading or Nature Study 2-3 days
Geography Blobbing 1-2 days
12:30pm Lunch & Clean-up
1:00pm Latin
1:20pm Language Arts
2:00pm Read Aloud Time
2:30pm Nap/ Quiet Time
3:00pm Independent Reading & Piano Practice for olders
I should note that our daily schedule really only works if I keep our evening schedule somewhat predictable too. For us, that means a good dinner and a regular bedtime. Our scheduling for the school year goes like this…
On CC days we don’t do at home lessons, so I’ve taken each curriculum and divided the lessons by four for our four day work week. Once I know how many weeks each subject will take, I put them into an Outlook calendar. With the exception of special holidays, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, we continue with lessons even when our CC campus is off for the week. Because our Ambleside reading takes 36 weeks, we begin with that first. Then we add in our Saxon math lessons. On our fourth week, we’ll have begun all of our lessons except CC. Our CC community begins meeting on our fifth week. With our current schedule, we’ll be done by the end of April. But knowing that we’ll have sick days and spontaneous day trips, I expect us to really finish sometime in May. It’s great to have this freedom and flexibility during the school year! As you can see in the picture above, I don’t schedule by day, but just put the lesson numbers we should complete for the week. Knowing where we “should” be helps me track our progress and make adjustments when necessary.
As with all planning, this is not a dictator but a guide. As the parent and teacher, I have the flexibility to make changes when needed remembering that the learning not the accomplishing is the goal. How do you figure your schedule? I know there’s a million ways to do it, so please share! I’d love to hear!
Thank you for this – really! I’m just starting homeschool (starting our 3rd week today), and starting CC tomorrow. It’s a lot to make sure we get scheduled. It helps so much to see others’ schedules and to make sure I’m not forgetting anything. 🙂
3 weeks in – nicely done! not forgetting anything is exactly why i need a schedule! haha. 🙂 my sleepy mom brain needs a checklist for virtually everything!
I am trying to simplify this with blocks of time. I have a 3rd, 1st and prek in the official schooling age. The first hour in the morning I let the 1st grader work on different bits of independent work while I do the one on one with the 3rd grader. Then we flip that for the next hour. The 3rd hour we do together work. In the midst of that I try giving the preKer bits of time he can handle with various structured activities. So far so good. A timer seems to help keep me in the rhythm.
erica, i love this! i could see this working for us in the future! thanks for sharing!!
Can you share more about your notebooks for CC review? What do you do / how do you review using them? Prinables?
Hi Heather! I have notebooks set up for my two oldest (ages 8 and 7) to use for CC review. They are filled with simple copywork printables. You can see my list here — http://classicalconversationsathome.com/2014/07/notebooking-way-cc-cycle-3/ I also did a post on how you could create notebooks w/o the printables – http://classicalconversationsathome.com/2014/08/creating-classical-notebook/
Hope this helps! I also have a post in the works that answers some questions I’ve been asked. If the above posts don’t answer your questions, please let me know!
My high school daughter has a weekly schedule format. That works really well for her. She is a very independent student and likes the flexibility of scheduling out her week of lessons each week. For my first grader, I’ve found that what is working well right now is to have a daily/weekly schedule of her work for me for each week. It’s more like a checklist. I like to keep it pretty simple. 🙂 I will keep these schedules in my planner binder. I talked more about the details of our schedules a couple of weeks ago on my blog. So feel free to stop by if you’d like to read more about it. Here’s the post: http://thesimplyblog.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/lets-talk-schedules/
So glad to see you paring CM with CC. I, too, do this as well and find it to be a heavenly match. Many people feel they are exclusive but not so… I have homeschooled for 20 years the CM way and love the scaffolding CC brings into the mix!
Looks great! I also plan with times, but this year I’m trying a more free-flowing approach. My ‘plan’ still has times on it though, for the sake of my brain =)
How do you manage to work out in the morning? That’s one thing that I haven’t figured out with four littles and homeschooling!