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HELP HELP! Are we doing too much?
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Oh wow! I just typed up this really long post and the website glitched or something and it disappeared! 🙁
I’m just going to link the blog post that was a huge inspiration to me for now. I don’t have time to retype all that info. again this morning.
http://afterthoughtsblog.net/2014/06/secrets-from-charlotte-mason-on.html
I’ll post again later. Have a great day! 🙂
What a great article! I will definitely read it again anf explore the other links to revamp my schedule. I have backed off this year and have found that the days I am intentional about making less be more, we have a beautiful and peaceful home. I just need to make more days like that! Thanks again.
Thank you, Melanie. I am sorry your post got lost. I hate when that happens. I have read that article…several times. And it is inspiring, but I still have a hard time implementing.
I keep typing up these nice long answers but they won’t post! I’m going to try posting them a bit at a time and see if they’ll go through that way…
Hi again Wings2Fly! I’m going to take another stab at answering your questions. First of all, I am down to homeschooling one child now as is the author of the blog post I linked. I know homeschooling multiples makes everything more complicated. 🙂
I will share what’s worked for me but I know each family has to find their own balance. I did watch the clock for the first week or so, just to keep us on track. I needed to make sure that my allotted times were reasonable for each subject. Once I ironed out any kinks, I found that we just naturally moved from subject to subject and things stayed pretty much on time. Sure, one subject might take a few more minutes, but then another would take less time and it would all even out.
I don’t have the times listed for my daughter-it stresses her out. I have a weekly chart on the fridge that lists what subjects we do on which day, and in what order. She checks that frequently to make sure she’s on track.
My daughter does her art projects during read alouds and in the afternoons. If something is taking longer than I had planned, we simply stop and pick up the next day where we left out. For instance, my daughter was working on a science test the other day and she wasn’t finished when it was time to move on to the next subject. We just put the test up to finish next week.
Okay, the first and the last of it went through but I lost the middle! lol!
I’m going to try again…
We’ve always used timers for math, piano/violin practice and literature so we have continued that practice. We also use a timer for one of my daughter’s weekly science readings because the chapters are really long so she hasn’t been able to get through a whole chapter in the allotted time for that subject.
I read a tip from another mom the other day and she has a list of things each child must finish before lunch and another list they must finish before free time. That sounds like another good way to schedule that might work better for some families-especially with older children.
Yay, it all finally went through! 🙂 It might be a bit choppy though.
Thank you for typing all of that out…again. I wonder if your first one got caught in the spam trap for some reason, though I can’t tell why. I am thinking I need to make my timer my best friend. I just would hate to have to watch the clock all day! And I do have multiple children, so that does make it harder. But the oldest one should be able to handle a little more responsibility in time management. I know some lessons take longer than we think they do when we get caught up in them. My son frequently reads more than I expect because he wants to find out what happens next in the story. And his oral narrations are quite lengthy. I will take another look at our schedule today. And I think I will write down how long we spend on them next week. Thanks again Melanie.
Hi Wings2Fly! 🙂 First of all, I want to be clear that we’ve only been implementing this particular schedule for a few months now. I am certainly not an expert in the area of scheduling. We’ve been doing these subjects on these days for a while now, but the timing has varied. I finally decided to make a stricter schedule because my daughter’s dawdling was dragging our day out too much. We have some afternoon engagements on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I really wanted her to be done with school beforehand. Too many things get left undone when we don’t stick with a stricter schedule in my home.
Another huge inspiration was this post:
http://afterthoughtsblog.net/2014/06/secrets-from-charlotte-mason-on.html
I also want to add that I am down to homeschooling one child, as is the author of the blog post linked above. I know homeschooling multiples makes life much more complicated. I think Christy answers most of your questions in her blog post but I’ll give my answers here as well though they mostly line up with hers. 🙂
For the first week or so, I watched the clock a bit to make sure we were keeping on track. Once we got used to doing subjects in a more timely manner, I found things fell into their time slots fairly naturally.
I use a timer for the subjects that have the propensity to go over their allotted time. For math I’ve been setting a timer for years so that was nothing new to our homeschool. We’ve also used a timer for literature and violin/piano practice for a while now. Most of the other subjects fit quite neatly into their allotted time slots. In fact, we finish quite a few of them in less than 20 minutes and that gets us ahead of schedule a bit. This is handy when something else puts us behind schedule. I find it all evens out pretty well in the end. One of our science selections has rather lengthy chapters so we time that reading as well. We simply close the book and pick up where we left off the next day(or the next time that particular subject is scheduled).
I get up at 6 and my daughter gets up at 7 most days. That gives us a couple of hours to wake up, have devotions, eat breakfast and walk the dog before school starts.
There are still days when we get way off track and don’t stick to our schedule. Life happens. However the schedule has been a huge blessing because it has helped us to accomplish so much more than we ever have before. Things get left off when the day stretches out too much.
This kind of schedules requires keeping a view of the big picture in mind. It’s okay if my daughter doesn’t finish her math book this year. She is working at a good pace and I have am working with the end in mind-having my child actually understand math, not just moving her through curriculum. I feel the same way about all of her subjects. I am not focusing so much on what we get done this year (although I do have term goals and yearly goals for our homeschool), but on all the wonderful relations my daughter will form over the years.
Having said that, I still think we will finish our plans for the year in a timely manner. I just can’t make that my focus.
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