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avoiding over scheduling
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I had a conversation with someone yesterday about how easy it can be to overbook life in general, and not leave enough margin, breathing space, extra time. The whole time I was thinking about our school schedule and books. I didn’t have to guard against my tendency to over-plan for our first term this year, we benefited from a full schedule and many books after an activity packed summer. It was good for us and helped everyone get back into a routine I think. But I don’t want to do it again this coming term. I did plan Term 1 so that we had 13 weeks to finish 12 weeks of work and we had time off also, all of which worked really well. (I think that idea was from missceegee’s posts) But what about the books and daily/weekly schedule? How do you NOT plan too much?
For me, I have a set time of when I want to do school. I have 4 children, ages 10, 9, 7, and 4, so for us school runs 8:30am-11:30am and then 2:00pm-3:00pm (that last hour is working with just my oldest – by then the other 3, or 2 rather, are done with all their stuff). I have to fit everything into that time frame. It forces me to only do, say, history 1 time a week, or science, or whatever. It really keeps me from overbooking them and myself. But boy do I get a lot done in a week! LOL
Another thing that helps is having a set time to work with everyone during that school time. So I chose how long I wanted to work with everyone and set up the schedule as follows:
7yo 40 min
all 3 40 min
BREAK 15 min
everyone 20 min
7&9yo 10 min
9yo 45 min
10yo 60 min
The schedule is the same every day, but the actual activities within those time frames changes daily. So on Monday with the 7yo I do science, copywork, reading, maps, math, and personal development. On Tuesday we do math, history & time chart, piano lessons, and reading. On Wednesday we do copywork, geography, math, Polished Cornerstones project, reading, and personal development. On Thursday we do Journal, poet study, reading, math games, and science.
And so on.
I purposefully filled up the time I had set for each of them, so I found I could fit in a board game with the kids once a week, too, along with a couple of things I hadn’t been doing but should have. I give myself ample time to get their work done within their time frame (I don’t spend an entire 10 minutes on reading, for example, with my 7yo – she can usually only handle 5 or 6 min – but it’s scheduled for 10). It helps us to “get done early,” and it’s less stress trying to stay within their time frames.
I have been doing this since last spring, and it has worked amazingly well. When I didn’t do it this way, the day felt disjointed and we did tend to overwork ourselves while not getting nearly as much done (however that tends to work? LOL). We now have a lot less burnout, from both me and the kids! 🙂 Hope this gives you some ideas!
ETA: The 3 olders have independent work that they do whenever I’m not working with them, and they also often start school early just to get a head start (after they are done with their morning chores, they have extra time before school technically begins). My 2 oldest read to my 4yo during their independent time on different days. Otherwise he just plays in the schoolroom while we work.
Personally, I find that sticking pretty close to the Curriculum Guide helps me to keep it simple. I feel like the SCM folks schedule just about the perfect amount of reading for each year.
I feel like the history modules have the perfect amount of age-appropriate reading. I even added in an extra series on the Middle Ages for ds9, and he ended up finishing it before I planned for him to!
This may be contrary to what some people believe/do, but we also don’t any “extra studies” of things. We don’t notebook (except for the free notebooks from Apologia for our science), don’t do any extra unit studies, don’t make lapbooks. Honestly, we don’t even cook foods from time periods that we study. We do four days of school each week, and I aim for between 170-180 days of school per year, including field trips, outings to museums or theater productions, the ballet, the symphony, etc. We take off at obvious holidays, for sicknesses, or just for a day off here and there. And when we hit the 170-180 day mark, we’re done for that year. Our children are allowed one extracurricular activity each, nothing more.
I was tempted to over-schedule this year by enrolling my kids in a homeschool art class at our community college and by involving them in 4H. But then I took a step back and really thought about what I might have been getting myself into. 4H meetings happen in the evenings, and it is a huge priority for me to keep our evenings free because of the planned family activities we do each evening. When I say “planned family activities” I mean that we assign a theme to each weeknight, and that’s what we do. So Monday is Game Night, Wednesday is Movie Night, etc. Since this was the first year the homeschool art class was offered, I decided it would be best to wait until the first term was over and hear some reviews, and THEN decide if it would be worth it for my kids. Turns out, I’m glad we didn’t enroll. Although they are offering the class again, many people told me that their kids didn’t really do much and didn’t enjoy it as much as they had hoped. So I saved myself $56 and wasted time!
In summary, I have found that we can enjoy a longer, broader school time in the mornings and really get a lot out of it when I keep our afternoons free for chores and play and our evenings free for family time. Many families are scheduled all day long. School in the mornings, various lessons/errands in the afternoons, and sports/practices/church in the evenings. Keeping free afternoons and evenings enables me to be OK with a full school morning. Does that make sense? We are still finished with school in under 3 hours, and my children still have plenty of relaxed play time in the afternoons. Daddy is home by 4:30-5:00 every day, and we enjoy simple evenings at home.
Does that help at all?
Lindsey
I tend to do something a little alternative so I’ll share here too and give you another perspective.
I agree wholeheartedly with Lindsey about keeping activities outside of home simple and sparse. Our outside activities weekly look like this: Monday – nothing, Tuesday – an hour French class, Wednesday – an hour choir practice and evenings at church, Thursday – two hours volunteering to feed the homeless, Friday – twice montly ICC class for three hours (includes both kids). And i’ve already moved the volunteering to Fridays and the French to Wednesdays to keep three days a week activity free. I just like that better. I will car school on the other days as well as do a lighter load with at home lessons. Or I’ll use those two days for other opportunities like doing Science at the zoo or popping in to the free days at museums.
As far as our daily schedule goes I don’t follow it to the letter. I have a general schedule of subjects/lessons listed out for each day. However, I don’t always get to everything every day because for us … well, we just are too oportunistic. That’s a nice way of saying it. If there is a great story on the radio news, we listen. If I happened to have found a great material to share then I share it before other things. If their dad pops home, as he did today, then we stop and visit with him obviously. That derails our lessons but I’ll add them in to other days or other times today. I look at everything from a weekly perspective. Did I get all our lessons and subjects in for the week? Each day might look mightly different than my schedule on any given week but it also might look just like my schedule.
Weekly I get all my lessons done! That’s my goal here.
I wanted to say thank you – I finished up my term 2 planning last week and had been doing Christmas things when I realized – I forgot to say thank you to you all! It had been awhile since I looked carefully at the modules and I went back and looked over them and it helped me limit my book choices. (Thanks Lindsey! And I’d like to move in with your family, your days sound so pleasant! Winter is usually a time my husband is home more, so I’m going to try some the theme night idea.) After I had posted originally I kept thinking how I needed something like one of those forms with boxes that only allow so much information in each box….they really bug me sometimes because my first name is long and usually won’t fit, seems it always loses the last letter! Anyway, I kept thinking how in this case, how a form like that would really help! I used Sara B.’s schedule…a certain amount of time to work with each child and as a family and VOILA! A form with boxes and limits! I made a daily schedule that fits us of course, but some reason it really helped me to set up the schedule looking at blocks of time to work with each child and as a family, instead of blocks of time for each subject. For whatever reason, it clicked for me. Anyway, thanks to you all, it was really nice to have planning be easy and then put away the plans to enjoy Christmas without a nagging feeling that I’ve overdone it. And Claire, while I did not use any of your ideas this time, I’m sure they will be helpful for someone else as they get their schedule set. Our summer was similar, I eventually figured out how finish each week’s work – but all the “extras” my kids do (ie. swimming, horseback riding, ballet) are available to us during the summer only, which I planned around but I had not planned on working a part-time job, so my plans went out the window! The job was good, it blessed us financially, and I am thankful for it, but the summer required a fair amount of flexibilty until I figured it all out. (I’m glad God sent the job in the summer, we ended up needing the extra money this fall, which neither my husband or I anticipated). Getting things finished on a weekly basis helped really helped then. Thanks again to you all!
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