I uses Planning Your Charlotte Mason Education by Sonya S. to plan out our daily schedule. I agree, you need to only do some of your subjects once per week. My girls are 8, 6, and 3 and it only takes us 2 to 2 1/2 hrs to get all our work done (this doesn’t include outside time, nap, handicrafts, chores, etc).
We do:
history 4 days per week
geography/map drill 1 day
Science 2 days
Math 5 days
Spanish 4 to 5 days (short lessons)
Copywork/Grammar 5 days
Literature/reading 5 days
Poetry, art, and music each 1 day per week
drawing 1 day
I schedule Mon-Wed as our heavier days and Thurs and Fri as our light days so we can run errands and go to co-op classes.
We start each day with history (or geography)/bible/scripture memory, then break up to do individual work, then back together again for shared subjects. Our history is the bible this year btw. We listen to a composer during lunchtime.
So all in all we do school work from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. then outside, lunch, rest, outside before supper, then evening routine starts at 6 p.m. Girls go to bed by 9 p.m We do handicrafts at night about 1 time per week (or even 1x/monthly!)
In our homeschool, we do certain subjects EVERY day: Math, History, Scripture Memory, Bible, Science, Copywork.
Fine arts are done 2-3x per week. Alternating. So on Monday we do Picture Study and Music Study. Tuesday we do Artist Study and Composer Study. Wednesday..back to picture and art.
Reading and Grammar alternate days.
Nature Studies, Field Trips and Shakespeare are weekly.
The shorter lessons have helped, as well as getting all of the table work done before other school work like stories or games. I have slowed down our pace and select one book to read from for a daily story time, whether it happens to be on history or geography or composer/artist biography. I just read from whichever book interests us that week. We are more focused. Thanks.
SarahCPA, I’m sure you’re feeling much relief and freedom now! I just re-vamped my schedule last night. It’s a tad longer than it was but it’s workable.
It certainly is better now. My son wants to know how many subjects are left until schoolwork is done. I don’t tell him that some of the extra “fun” things are schoolwork, so I say we are done after science. But, I am still not fitting in the game time, which I think is greatly important to their education. We also usually miss fine art time. Something else always seems to come up. I am thinking I need to schedule those for another time. Maybe only do games one evening during the week and then on the weekend?