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Planning, Scheduling & Organizing, Oh my!
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I am in planning mode for next year and I am having a dilemma! I want to create a schedule. Really as more of a guide to help me lay out how I am going to work with several kids. You see, I have 6 kids, 3 of which I will be doing school with (2 first graders & 1 third grader). We will be doing History/Geo/Bible, Scripture Memory and Science together, but I still have Math, Reading, Handwriting to do with each child along with a little Using Language Well & Spelling Wisdom for the 3rd grader. I want a way to lay out a plan of attach, so to speak! I am planning to use the Table of Contents method to check things off! However, I really need something I can look at to see what my day or week is going to look like to prepare! I really wanted to like the CM organizer, but don’t think you can see more than the next day! I want to see a week at a time! I also have quite a few things that will fall once every 5 days and with us on a 4 day school schedule, that will mean these things will fall on a different day each week. I couldn’t figure out how to make the CM Organizer work for that. If I am mistaken, please let me know! I prefer to plan up front in the Summer and then just adjust as needed! This past year I worked on the upcoming week every other Sunday and I would write out my lesson plans for the next 2 weeks, but it was too time consuming! So, what am I trying to say? I want something that is a do the next thing and we can just check things off as we go, but more detailed than a daily schedule where I can see all subjects together! Am I dreaming or does such a thing exist? What do you ladies use to plan your school year? I am totally flexible and not bound to a schedule, but I do like to have something as a tool and a way to organize myself, especially having 3 kiddos who are still dependent on me for all subjects! I would truly appreciate any thoughts and feedback to guide me in this area!
I think you may be talking about two different things. First, I’m zero help with the Organizer. So let’s move on to what I am good with: scheduling/creating a routine. I’m familiar with teaching several kids – this year I have 6 officially schooling with 3 younger tagalongs, and 2 of the school age don’t read yet.
Here is how I set up a routine. I block out the first part of the morning for group work we do together. How long will that take? Then I would make a list for each child of their work to be done separately. What can child A and B work on while you help C one on one? That goes in the first spot after group work. Then child C moves to something on their own, Child A gets you one on one, and child B does a small break or more one on one. Repeat until finished.
The other option, may work for some things even when they are not independent learners yet, is to sit all 3 down together at a table and you help all 3 as needed in a subject. For example, I can oversee all 6 of my kids doing math practice at one time, helping as needed. But on the one day a week that they each need a new lesson I work with them one on one, youngest to oldest.
This time where they are not independent does pass, just hang in there! I’m at the point where a lot of my kids just get an assignment sheet and go on their merry way to do individual subjects, and they just grab me when they need help. And even kids who can’t read yet can learn to do some things independently. For example have their copywork pages printed in a binder and they can easily just do the next page every day. Or the next line on a page, or two lines. Can they read it? Maybe, but it doesn’t matter for copywork. For math most days my non-readers can just do the next practice page and only need me to read word problems to them.
I don’t have a large family, but I can chime in on what works here, which is very similar to Tristan’s approach. I have four kids, ages 12, 10, 8, and 7. My two littler ones are not fluent readers yet. We also have animals to tend to which play a significant role in working through the day efficiently yet beautifully.
I tend to look at the day in chunks rather than in this-start-time to this-end-time.
Our first part of the day is devoted to waking, dressing, washing, tending the animals, breakfast, Bible, memory, and Latin for the older two girls.
Then we attend daily mass and use the time in the car to sing our hymns and folk songs.
Once home, we tend the animals, everyone grabs a snack, goes potty, and gathers for some table time, which includes math, SW/ULW, phonics, and italics. Here I simply rotate through the children … so say while I’m working on 10 min of phonics with one child, another is working on copywork, another is preparing dictation, and another may be reading her math lesson and getting started. For these lessons I have tried over the years to train them into more independence even for short spurts of time and keeping them all near at the table really helps get those more disciplined subjects done well and without a lot of dwaddle.
At this point my little boys are free to play while my older girls begin their assigned literature (they narrate in the afternoons). I tend the house, lunch, laundry, etc.
We have lunch, listen to our composer, clean up and then we gather for our family liturgy. Here we do picture, composer, poetry, Shakespeare, read alouds, history, geography, Spanish, nature, and catechism, taking breaks as needed for real life which is never factored into paper planning. 😉
Afternoons are free for handwork, outdoors, Irish Dance, art, free reading, resting, playing.
So I tend to think of early morning, mass, mid morning, lunch, liturgy, free afternoons.
Of course, this day-to-day involves little people so I try to be fluid and always close the math and dictation and copywork books before lunch whether or not we are “finished” for that day, move on to our time of liturgy, and simply keep moving ahead vs trying to complete each day’s worth in a day.
We also only school four days a week so I just check off what comes next vs trying to fit it all into four days, and if we trail into a new year with some things, that’s okay as long as there is peace and wonder and happiness in the home.
I’ve used the CMOrganizer and it should work for what you want. If you want to see a week’s worth of work at a time, you would click “show more assignments” under the subjects you want. It will even print that way in a list form. The top of your printed page would say “week of Mon. 00-00-00” (the date you print) so each assignment is not listed under a particular day of the week. But if you want a resource to show up once every five days, you would schedule it for a particular day of the week. But you may have to print so you have it show up each week. Not sure about that…. Maybe someone can do the thinking on that for me 🙂 The CMO is an awesome tool and has saved me a LOT of time and stress!
Regan,
I’m a very big picture planner and I love at-a-glance charts! I only have three children left at home, but we have many other irons in the fire that I need to juggle in and around homeschooling so a schedule or routine is very important to me.
I don’t use the Organizer because I tend to be more of a paper/pencil planner. One year, I thought I’d try digital planning and our computer crashed. I felt handicapped and decided 100% digital was not for me.
A resource that I find very helpful in planning our CM education is SCM’s Planning Your CM Education in 5 Simple Steps. Based on this book, here’s how I plan….
1. Determine desired subjects/goals to teach your children for the year (ex. history, science, math, etc.)
2. Determine desired content/skills to teach in each subject (ex. what time period in history, what level of math, which areas of science will be studied, etc.)
3. Determine which books to use within those subjects (once you know what you want to teach, choose the books you will use)
4. Decide when you will school, breaking up your year into manageable chunks – use a calendar (ex. 12 week terms, 6 weeks on with one week off, year round school, etc.)
5. Determine how much you will cover in each chunk (this is where you would divide out pages to see how much ground you need/want to cover in each term/chunk of time)
6. Map out a weekly schedule (figure out how often you will teach each subject, choosing which subjects to do on which day)
7. Create a daily plan
Basically, you start by planning the big picture, then breaking it down in to year, term, week, and day. Here’s a post I wrote a while back showing how I pull it all together. It has links to Charlotte’s Parents’ Union Schedules, as well as some of my sample term schedules and daily check lists. I have tweaked our plan since writing the post as our kids get older and I find what works and what don’t, but I think you can still get an idea of what I mean…
http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-your-charlotte-mason-education.html
Hopefully, there’s something useful here. Please feel free to ask further questions. I look forward to reading how others plan 🙂
Tristan, thanks so much for your feedback! The problem is my kids really aren’t independent on anything except handwriting! At least 2 of the 3 are. That is one of my issues! I have already laid out what I need to accomplish each day (4 day week), but it’s going to be challenging to get it all in during the morning hours simply because there’s only so much of me to go around!!! I am doing Phonics with all 3, although not every day will be a new teaching! (We do All About Reading) I am doing Strayor Upton Math with all 3 so that is also one on one! My 3rd grader will start Using Language Well this year along with Spelling Wisdom, which isn’t very time consuming, but it is also one on one for the first year! Then we will all be doing Science, Hist/Geo/Bible, Scripture Memory, Hymn Study, Picture Study, Composer Study, Art (Artistic Pursuits) as a family! I’m not too concerned about the family stuff! It’s mainly the one on one stuff I’m trying to fit in. We won’t be doing a very long morning family time as we need to jump right into individual work due to so much requiring me. We will start out with Prayer, Scripture Memory & Hymns and then do Hist/Geo/Bible as a family! Then we will go right into our individual stuff. I think I will have to do Science (3x s week) & Art (1x a week) in the afternoon! Greenebalts…. as far as scheduling goes, I have done most of that! I have what I want accomplish on each day but coming up with a way to put it all in one place where I can check it off! I like the idea of the CM Organizer, but I would love to print it off or view it by days or for the week! I like your schedules and checklists Greenebalts! They are done by the week! In my mind I was thinking I needed something that is day to day! Like a list of each lesson for each subject so I can check it off as we go! I want a schedule to use as a guide but I need a chart to organize all the work to be done into one place! I’m still pondering this!!! I really appreciate all the good input! When it hits me, I’ll know it 🙂 ha ha
I am using Homeschool Planet this year to schedule out assignments for seven students. It works great for that along with my planning notes in OneNote. I’ve used the CM Organizer for a long time, but I jumped off using online programs until this year again. I wish I could combine Homeschool Planet’s calendar schedules with the CM Organizer’s ability to record things worked on and it’s great report printouts.
Just a side note, keep on keeping on with those Practical Arithmetics books. Three of my children worked every problem out of the series and are succeeding now in upper level math using The Art of Problem Solving courses. The younger set are following in the footsteps of my math lovers using those little, thick books too.
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