Sarah Mackenzie's Spiral Notebook idea

If you have misgivings then maybe it’s a not for you?  Personally it is not for me. 9 kids – I’d go crazy writing it all out by hand over and over and over.  I print out a weekly assignment page for each kid and they run with it. It helps keep us all on the same page and accountable. My high schooler gets a weekly assignment sheet from me but some of it she fills in herself (she has work for outside teachers and she has some flexibility in her home planned studies to decide how much to do each day to complete all the work I’ve assigned for that week. We have a daily tutoring time working 1 on 1 that she prepares for so I know where she’s at.).  The other kids do the work as assigned, and we have daily 1 on 1 time to check in with each other.

I use the grid that Lindafay has on her site, which is charlottemasonhelp. It is very plain, no frills, day one, day two, etc. for a twelve week term.  I can either pencil in what I want read, narrated, etc., or I type it all in (which is neater).  Put them on clipboards and that’s that.  I have to be able to “see” a whole weeks worth so that I can plan “life” around school.

I would go nutso and I only have 3 dc. They would be on me waiting for their lists and if they couldn’t get started til I was finished, it would be mayhem. Plus, the stress of having to do that each night would be too much for me to handle. I’m getting a headache just thinking about it!

But, who knows, maybe it’s the right method for you 🙂

ETA: the grid I use has check boxes so I go over those each day, or so, to see what they did. And, if there was an O (for oral narration) or a W (for written), I usually ask to see it or hear it 🙂 I also add how much time should be spent on the subject or how many pages, etc., so they have something to go by and they have their timers. And, I add if the book is on my Kindle, ipad or an audio book, mostly so I don’t forget, but also so they can just get at it and not have to interrupt me if I’m working with another child.

I also think it sounds neat but could not implement it for our family. I actually don’t really care for spiral notebooks because they get messy for my kids. Their piano lesson schedule (that the teacher fills out for them to complete) is a bit of a mess, and the pages fall out. And it is not used nearly as often as a school schedule would be. I also would not want to have to write schedules every day.

I made an xcell spreadsheet. Down the left it says subjects and across the top days of the week. I print out quite a few at a time and spend 15-20 minutes filling out the schedules for 3 kids on Friday afternoon. All I have to do is enter the lesson or page number. The kids then have a weekly check list that they can check off. I only fill out one week at a time in case we miss a day, or a lesson on a specific day, I don’t have to correct future plans.

I think for some families it works great. I have a friend and she schedules as they go, so she doesn’t write it down until completed in a spiral notebook. It works for her 🙂 I prefer to have our week scheduled that way the bigger kids can get going on some tasks while I work with the little one.

I did use it last year and loved it. I really thought I wouldn’t but it worked well. We have 9 kids. Last year 6 were school age (1 was college but lived at home, 1 a toddler-preschooler, 1 a newborn)
I found that it only took about 15 minutes each day to write out the next days assignments (I had a planning page that I worked from to help me know what to put down).
The best part, for me, was being able to adjust our daily schedules when stuff came up which it seems to do frequently.  If we had a medical appt or “have to do now” errands, I could just adjust the schedule as I wrote it down. When I used to do weekly schedules and something came up, I had to tell them what to cross out and what to move to another day. That was much more of a pain than the 15 minutes it took to write it out each day. When they finished a task on their sheets, they highlighted it so I knew at a glance whether they had finished or not. My kids preferred them also.
I did find it helpful to have an schedule notebook for me too. That way I knew who needed me and for what subjects so I could make sure to get those in when it worked best.
As far as the messiness of spirals, I didn’t find it to be a problem. The notebooks were slightly beat up by the time we were done with them but it wasn’t bad. Since we only wrote on one side of the page due to the highlighting, the books didn’t last all year so maybe that helped. Since it wasn’t something I was keeping once the year was over, I didn’t worry about it too much.

I’m using it this year with 2 kiddos…both emerging readers.  We review the list in the morning and throughout the day.  They aren’t doing too much on their own yet so we don’t have too many “lessons” to fill in so some of it is just accountability for their chores.

For example, ds8

dog breakfast

piano lesson 6

blanket time with sibling

copywork

trash

sweep kitchen

read to Daddy

and a checkbox next to “mama approved” at the bottom for me.

They love to see it.  There are some nights that I don’t feel like doing it but it’s holding me accountable too.

Here’s a thought. What about spiral index cards? I fill out index cards (I call them work cards) for each of my kids for the week. Just one card for each kid and tucked into a business-sized envelope taped to the wall (holds 3 cards sideways). Since we do most lessons and enrichments together I don’t have to write those things down but for math, science and language arts they need a little direction. They cross things off (or I do) as they go along. If we leave for the day to have a field trip or something it’s easy to see what’s been missed and I can add it to next week’s card. Since spiral paper notebooks fall apart this might be a sturdier way to make it work and to keep everything in one place. Also, I use a lot of abbreviations: SW (Spelling Wisdom), L. (Lesson), WN (Written Narration), etc.