Emancipate me from my schedule-master!

Few questions for you:

-11 things??  What are they?  Do they need to be done daily?  11 seems like a lot, in my opinion.

-How old is your child?  I have a 10YO who is done at noon on days he wants to, and a 14YO who wastes time all day and ends up scrambling at 5:00 to finish everything before Scouts, etc.

-Are you keeping to short lessons?  Even if you did 10 minutes per day per subject, you still should be done in less than two hours.  What exactly is eating up the time?

-What are your goals?  Are you pushing too much because you feel that you need to “finish” certain things before the end of the year?  (I’m in that mode myself.  I want to finish our read-alouds before sunny days, swimming lessons, and overnight camps interrupt our schedule)

Yeah, many people do what’s called a loop schedule, where you rotate through a list of things that don’t have to be done every single day. You don’t necessarily have a set schedule (music appreciation on Monday, art appreciation on Tuesday, etc.). You just do what comes next on the list. Then you don’t feel the stress of being behind in 3 subjects at once! Great articles out there on the details of the scheduling should you want.

I would worry about burning you and your daughter out with plugging through until 4 day after day. School should be enjoyable and adaptable still. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to do it all!

We do school until lunch and if we didn’t get to math or reading then we will do that during quiet time, but it’s only 10 minutes,  but my son is 7. I find setting the timer for 15 min. Or whatever time limit for each subject  helps us to stay on task and get our subjects done.

Have you read the blog posts on Brandy Vencel’s blog about Scheduling For Peace? They are excellent. I highly recommend them!

School should only take a few hours with a 9 year old. I would definitely start cutting things back and working on helping your daughter to stick to the facts when narrating. It’s also important to stick with short lessons. If the readings are short, the narrations should be fairly short as well.

I might cut back on the school read alouds and simply switch some of that to family read alouds that are part of your family culture rather than school. Taking piano off of the school schedule and making it an extracurriculuar activity will shorten the school schedule as well. They are both still part of your routine but not part of your school schedule if that makes sense. Many kids who attend school outside of home are still read aloud to in the afternoons and still participate in extracurricular activities outside of school.

All of that said, my daughter is 14 and she is still done by 3 every day, including piano. We do 11 things each day as well. Here are the subjects we do every day:

• Bible
• Scripture memory
• Science
• Math
• History
• Latin
• Aerobics
• Piano
• Copywork/Dictation
• Composition
• Literature

We have a light schedule on Thursday so that we are able to run errands as well. On Thursdays we do Bible, Math, History, Latin, Piano and P.E. Then we do the riches like Shakespeare, picture study, etc. along with interest led subjects like computer programming and formal art.

If something interrupts our schedule, I prioritize our subjects and work through as much as we can until 3. Bible comes first, then math, Latin, copywork/dictation and whatever else we can accomplish before three. On those days, I do have my daughter practice piano after school hours so that we can get more of the academic work done.