Today's Heart of the Matter meme asks us to explain how we schedule. Back in March when I ordered curriculum, I came up with a great plan of how we would organize our school year and our school days.
First off, I decided we would do a year-round schedule, "doing" school for three weeks and then taking a week off. I tweaked the schedule here and there so that the weeks off would coincide with the two weely vacations we would take (one with my familly and one with Joel's) and major holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter). With this schedule we would be beginning our school year next week.
My reasons for coming up with a year-round schedule were that Emily Anne was so excited about learning right now (and I was so excited about homeschooling) that I hated to wait just because traditional schedules start in the fall. I've had a couple of misgivings since March, which include the fact that the vast majority of people in my local homeschool group follow a traditional schedule and my worry that breaks so often might seem arbitrary to EA when those breaks don't coincide with a vacation or holiday (and they would be, wouldn't they?). Also, I'm not sure how the Saxon math curriculum I'm using will work with year-round scheduling, but I'm sure we can adapt it. I also forgot to include Vacation Bible School in my planning, and it occurs the third week into our schedule.
Since next year will just be 5K for EA, and SC doesn't require reporting during that year, I think that it will be a time for experimentation for us. We'll go ahead and try out our year-round schedule and see how it works for us.
Back in March I also came up with a schedule for each day, complete with times for each subject. Knowing that children complete some assignments that we had thought might take more time quickly, and vice versa, I think I'll go with a more relaxed agenda approach. A white board would be like our To-Do List, with each subject and/or activity written on the board, along with a magnetized picture of each one. We'll start each day around 9am, which will give us some down time and chore time before the school day begins.
How do you schedule your homeschool days? Share your schedule and check out other schedules at The Heart of the Matter.
5 comments:
Sounds great! Can't wait to hear how it all goes!! And to learn more about the resources you are using
Thanks so much for sharing!
The very best thing about home schooling is that you can continue to tweak as needed.
I've been tweaking for 8 years ;)
We use a year round schedule here also. It works great for us. I can't wait to read about your first official school day.
We do the same schedule and have for years! We love it! The beautiful thing about this type of schooling is that you can tweak it! Since you forgot VBS...or if the household has the flu, or unexpected company show up to visit!I just rearrange the week off, to that week. So we end up doing 4 weeks of school before we get another week off...but it still works out. And if we ended up HAVING to take too many "extra" weeks off in the year...I just add them on to the end of the rotation and out "new year starts a little later. No worries!!!
Sounds like a great schedule. We are planing to do something similiar this next year. We will do 3 weeks more structured school and 1 week less structured and formal, set aside for mostly hands on, field trip, relaxed learning. I hope that this will work for us.
Thanks for sharing!!
JOYfully in Him,
Kelli
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