Thank you so much for the advice so far. I see that I should reduce the copywork and combine 3 subjects into one sitting, then a break for restroom or lunch, and then 3 subjects to another room. I will work on that more.
Here is the tentative schedule:
20 After breakfast in the kitchen: Proverbs chapter from Bible and discuss, Scripture Memory Box, Devotional Book
10 Kitchen: Poem/song/Memory Box/ American Sign Language
30 Living Room: Reading – Alternate kids while other plays. Sightword cards / Word lists / Reader / Beginner’s Bible
20 Living Room: Read Aloud: Geography (we focus on one country and their culture each month) OR Biography about composer or artist, alternating days 1 and 3 to geography and days 2 and 4 to biography. We listen to composer music at lunch time or during chores.
30 Dinning Room: Math – MUS and/or AL abacus and/or RS game. I teach them together and I do a lot of explaining and demonstrating with manipulates before we move on to the worksheet. I wonder how much longer I’ll be able to keep them together. Oldest catching it sooner now.
LUNCH / Clean up / Chores / Bathroom Break
30 Dinning Room: Science – My son loves science and we do Exploring Creation with Zoology 2. This is scheduled for 4 days. On the 5th day is a field trip or nature walk. It is followed by a lapbook activity (they love) 4 days or nature notebook on the 5th day. I have 30 minutes scheduled for Science for both kids together. I have my 7 year old narrate after I read.
20 – Kitchen: Language – son does 2 pages Explode the Code and likes to color the pictures (carried over from Sonlight since he likes it so much.) Daughter does only 1 page. She takes longer, but is able since she is advanced and reads/writes and wants to do what older brother does. Then I’ll do some phonics teaching from a workbook on long vowels or short vowels. I am looking to change that to possibly Queen LL for little ones vol. 3 or CLP Adventures in Phonics B. I know these aren’t much CM, but I think they need some phonics teaching. Any advice here? I could maybe reduce the Explode the code by every other question.
30 – Living Room: History – Read aloud (20 min.) from living books on history and possible timeline figure for part of that time (10 minutes).
SNACK / Get mail / Bathroom break
20 – Living Room: Story time – Read aloud literature
20 – Dinning Room: Copywork (I see from Suzukimom how I need to change this. So this would be 5 – 10 minutes. Thanks)
20 – Dinning Room: Game, a fun time after completing school to focus on language days 1 and 3 and Math days 2 and 4.
30 – Art Free Time: Monday – Son drawing, daughter ballet / Tues. Piano lesson / Wed. Music study of other instruments in orchestra or more piano / Thurs. Piano lesson / Friday Craft. (We have never gotten to this time slot yet!) They usually work in ballet and drawing on their own play time. I thought it would be a good reward for finishing school work and keep them on task with things they like. We have not started piano lessons because I can’t seem to find the time to fit it in. They have asked to learn how to play and they will sometimes play around on the piano. So I would like to start teaching this when we can work it in.
30 – Play Outside. If it is ball practice, we just do that. If it is raining, we do a lesson on health/safey/manners.
30 extra at bedtime: Scripture memory Box again, read a poem from A.A. Milne, Read a library picture book, Read a bedtime Bible story, prayers, and play a CD of music or story when I leave.
This looks really long. It is a total of 4 hours plus 1 hour of art and play outside plus 30 minutes at bedtime. Yet it takes us longer with breaks and transitions through the day. We do this 4 days and on Friday we do something with the local homeschool group, so some subjects are not done on Friday.