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Scheduling – Multiple children, wide range of ages
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I have a toddler all the way up to a near-teenager. This next year I’m considering a shift to our schedule and am curious how you mamas with a wide age range of children have done the subjects that include your entire family, by way of scheduling during the day. I’m not as much concerned with what to do with my toddler (as I have ideas there), as I am with how you’ve structured your days. Anyone willing to share a general schedule?
I’m happy to share what we do!
8- 9 Breakfast and Chores
9-9:30 Family Time – Hymn, Bible, Scripture Memory, French.
9:30-11:30 Individual Study – Language Arts, Math, Science and History Reading for independent readers, Science or History Read Aloud for younger students.
Lunch, Chores and Play Time
1:00 – 2:30 Family Time – History, Literature, and Nature Study or Science Read Aloud. Alternate Poetry, Composer Study, Picture Study and Handicraft.
2:30 – 3:15 Independent Reading Time – this includes at least 30 minutes or one chapter in an assigned book and also free reading.
That’s what our day looks like! Hope it helps a little?
I have 9 kids, baby to 10th grader. During the school year our schedule is:
7am breakfast, followed by chores and getting ready for the day.
8:30am Family studies. We start with everyone to do history, devotional, hymns, artist or composer, etc. Then the high schooler goes to her individual subjects and I do science with the rest of the kids. Once that is done they all work on their individual subjects.
10am snack time
12pm – Lunch. all school work is done for most kids, high schooler often has one more thing to do. Ta da.
I read aloud during lunch or dinner.
We are fairly relaxed, but:
7:30-8:30 – breakfast, chores
8:30-9:30 – Morning Readings (family studies, including history, Bible, poetry, science, scripture memory, etc)
9:30-11:30 – individual studies, while I bounce from child-to-child assisting
After that, all but my 14YO are done for the day. Afternoons are for playing outside, board games, Legos, or extra science experiments that I’ve interested them in. ?
I am going to be accessing our schedule to determine if changes need to be made for next year! I have 6 kiddos, 3 of which are school aged. Right now (at the end of the year) our schedule is as follows
7:3o- 9am – Breakfast and morning jobs and time for littles and mommy
9 am – Calendar Time and handwriting -2nd grader
9:15am – Family Time (Bible verse, Bible/History/Geo)
10am – Handwriting with K5ers (I have 2)
10:15am Break and snack
11am – Math (independently)
11:30am – Phonics independently & 2x a week we do Science with the 2nd grader and whoever else wants to participate and listen 🙂
12:30pm – I am usually starting in lunch at this point
1:30 – Read Aloud (we usually start with one for the littles and then I put them down for nap and read to the oldest 3)
Our schedule has changed a bit over this year! We started out doing math in the afternoon because I had a few littles that wanted to come in and mess with the manipulatives! Now we are using Strayor Upton and our Math time has been simplified and only use manipulatives when needed, which is very rare! So, we have added it back to the morning! I like having read aloud time after lunch as it is a great time to wind down after a full morning befor e the littles take a nap! The challenge for me is that I don’t have any children working independently yet! My 2nd grader will do calendar time and handwriting independently before we start our family time every morning as long as he isn’t learning any new letters (he started Print to Cursive Proverbs in January). Other than that, everything requires me 🙂 Tis the season of life we are in! Next year we are adding in Hymn study, art, Picture Study, Psalms study, Music (composer) study, Poetry & Using Language Well! Some of that will be done on a loop schedule and most of it isn’t very time consuming but I will really have to think through our schedule for next year! It will be nice to have more variety! I also think we will need to start by 8:30am! The good news, after next year, my oldest should be able to begin some independent work. Woo hoo!!! Then again, after next year, I will add another child…lol. I love seeing what other people are doing!
I wasn’t happy with our schedule this year, so I’ll be changing it for the coming year. I’ve actually already changed it a bit and am much happier with our new schedule! This past year we did our family subjects in the mornings, but by the time we got to the 3Rs, everyone was tired and we rushed through the basics. I know we are supposed to “spread the feast”, but it felt like we were constantly overloading on dessert!
Here is my in-the-works plan:
Breakfast: This will have to be a bit earlier next year, maybe 7:30 or 8:oo. After breakfast, we do kitchen chores and pick up the main area of the house (living room, dining room, bathroom, hallway).
8:00 or 8:30-9:00My plan is to spend the 30-60 minutes on my younger two. It seems sort of silly, but I bought a program to use with my 2yo. There is a short prayer & book in the mornings, plus a few activities we can do then or save for later in the afternoons. I’ll also work with my 6yo on phonics and some other subjects, including history & science. After that, they’ll be mostly done for the day! My older DC can work on independent subjects during this time and/or finish breakfast clean-up.
9-10:00: Latin time. We’ll be doing 2 programs, one video based and one taught by me. The one I’m teaching will be shorter, so I can then get my younger two (ages 6 and 9) started on math, copywork, and spelling while the others finish their lesson. I don’t think Latin will actually take this long, so we’ll have a built in break here.
10-11:30: Older ones can work on math, younger ones will have a break. Once their math is finished, we’ll get to literature and some read-alouds.
11:30-1:00: Lunch time. I plan on supervising them, while they make lunch. I guess this will be part home ec. 😉 After lunch, I hope to do some “morning basket” type activities. We’ll probably follow with some free reading time, while DS takes a nap.
1:30-3:00: This will be our “weekly” subjects time slot. History, geography, science, art, and Bible will go here. I put weekly in quotes, since some of these subjects will be 2-3 times per week. I can see this going past 2:30, since we may get a late start if DS takes longer to put down for a nap or get involved in a project. My high schooler will work more independently for some of this time. My 6 and 2yos will have this time for free play. I imagine they will join in for some of it though.
3:00-ish and beyond: After this, we’ll try to get some free time & outdoor time fitted in. Usually we get outdoors for an hour before I start dinner.
After meal times, we try to have a quick pick-up. I usually have 2 DC on dishes (loading/unloading dishwasher, scraping & rinsing plates, etc.). The other two pick up the main floor, sweeping & mopping as needed. I start and/or fold a load of laundry & get the pots & pans washed.
Screens (tv, tablet, computer, etc.) will be unavailable during school hours. This also will apply to me! Exceptions will be for our lessons on DVD of course. 😉
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