How do you ease into the school year?

I start with Bible and Math, and then add one-two subjects per week until we’re at a full load. It takes about a month, but I feel much less overwhelmed, and it seems easier on my kiddos.

Some years we’ve done 1/2 days to start.  Day 1 in my plans would be done on Mon. & Tues., Day 2 on Wed. & Thurs., Day 3 on Fri. & Mon., etc.  After a couple weeks of this, we try to move to full days.

Other years, we’ve started with the basics and added more as the year progressed.  At first, we’d work on 3Rs plus history and Bible.  The next week, we might add science and poetry.  Eventually we work up to a full schedule.  

I’m not sure what we’ll be doing this year, but I need to decide soon!  

I usually begin full force in early August, but I actually started on Tuesday. We got 2 days completed. We will be camping next week, and then the following week, my dd is having surgery on her eyes. So, I thought it would be nice to get a few days in before camping. We did the main subjects, but it was light. This week I would like to get 2 more days completed. Maybe we will do a day or two before the surgery. This will give us a head start and then after the surgery, it won’t set us back if we take time off for recovery. It does not feel like school time until after our week of camping, so I am not going to do it every day until after that, and it will not be intense.

Perfect timing for this post as we plan to start tomorrow. I was debating on jumping in or taking it easy. Think we’ll just ease into it after reading this.

I do a “run through” day with my children — I tell them I want to run through the new school routine – I warn them before we do it, and continue to update them while we’re going through the day.  At the end (or in the middle, if I have to) I ask them for suggestions or make comments to them that “this didn’t seem to work.  What would work better” and that sort of thing.  It can take me two or three “run through” days of school to see which routine works for us.

Even then, we mess with the routine if we have to, in the middle of the year.  Whatever it takes to make it flow and work for all of us!

Part of my reason for doing a run-through as part of our “easing” into school is to try to see who can work at what independtly.  This year, I have two girls doing 1st grade math (at different points – one is at the beginning, one in the middle) so I needed to see if I could manage that.  I also needed to see if my oldest could work independtly at some things while I was working with the others.  And I wanted to see what the youngest was going to do while I was helping others.

Usually, I’m very up front with them about the run through.  They know it counts as a school day, they know we try desperately to get the whole thing done.  I have a general idea how long each time box is, (some time boxes are 15minutes, some longer), but doign the run-through just helps us all, I think.

Oh, and my girls are 9,7,5,3 – so they’re young.  But they can tell me (words or actions) whether things are working or not.

I have found that too many run-throughs put them in a bad humor, though! So I try to have it figured out and then one run through and one edit and one last “run through” – after that it needs to be real school.   And the changes can’t be drastic, or we’re all messed up and can’t remember what we liked and didn’t like – or why!