Scheduling multiple kids

I have a few suggestions that may help.  One thing I’d start with is a time “budget”.  Figure out how much time you want to spend on HSing, then work with that time.  I find I don’t really stick with our schedule on a day-to-day basis, but it’s a huge help when deciding what we can fit in each week.   CM recommended 20 minutes or less for the ages of your DC.   Some things like copywork or picture study will only take 5-10 minutes.  Allow extra time for breaks & interruptions.  We are adding a snack time to our literature lesson this year, which the kids are really excited about!

I like to stagger their lessons so one will have an independent subject while another works one-on-one with me.  At the ages of your DC, their independent tasks may be working on a puzzle or drawing a picture.  Our math is MUS, so they can watch the DVDs on their own, coming to me for extra help & grading/corrections when done.   We try to keep as many “family subjects” as we can to make better use of our time.  Science, history, art, and Bible are some great family subjects.

Another possibility is to be creative with your scheduling.  I like to alternate science & history days, but some families alternate science & history by the month, semester, or term.  We often do this for our “extras”.  For example, we may have a poet study one term, a handicraft the next, and nature study for the final term.  It’s way easier than keeping up with all three at the same time!

This year I have grades 9, 6, 4, 1st, and a preschooler.  We are no longer able to finish before noon, but I’m still keeping our school hours between 8 and 2:30.  That’s including a few breaks in between subjects and an hour for lunch.  I have 4 school aged DC, one needing high school credits.  Until this year, we generally finished before lunch, exceptions to this usually involving a later start to our school day!

Honestly, each family is different but even with 6 of my 9 kids (including a high schooler) we never school that long in a day. How about you give us an idea of what you are scheduling?  And in the mean time I’ll give you an example of what our schedule will be this year for school. We combine in some areas and not in others.

8am-8:30am – Morning time. We sing a hymn, pray, someone shares a scripture/spiritual thought, and we read a pages about a state’s facts. Then we will do 1 or 2 of the following subjects each day, depending on time: Picture study, poetry, grammar minute (picture books), Bedtime Math, Ohio history story, The Land of Fair Play (civics book).

8:30am-10am – I work with my 6th, 5th, 3rd, 2nd, and K kids around the table on the following: Math(all), learning to read (2nd), learning alphabet sounds (K), Spelling (6th,5th,3rd).  I just rotate around the table helping when needed, and they work on their own when they don’t need help. The high schooler is doing her work in writing, history reading, literature, etc.

10am – 11am – I spend this hour one on one tutoring my 10th grader. We work on anything she wants/needs to do with me. History discussions, writing/editing, math help, etc. During this time the other kids have a snack and then do their personal scripture reading and read or listen to an audio book for 1 chapter of assigned literature. Any free time after those is theirs to enjoy until 11am.

11am – 11:30am – I read aloud from our history stories to all but the high schooler. Then I turn the kids loose to do a narration in their notebook (written, drawings, etc) while I make lunch. From 11am-12pm my high schooler works on her school work. She’s got more freedom to pick what to do each time block, because she’s shown over the years that she can lay out her own schedule and get her work done diligently.

12pm – 2pm – Lunch and FREE time. I take care of medical needs for my 4 year old that take an hour in here too. Kids are allowed to play on a Kindle from 1-2 if the wish.

2pm-3pm – Kids can finish up anything they ran out of time to finish earlier in the day, for example if they didn’t get all their math problems done or wanted to work more on their history notebook page. Twice a week we will do art here.  BUT if they did their work in the reasonable times allotted earlier in the day they are essentially done with school work at noon.  The high schooler will work on science homework in this time block for an online veterinary science class, or any other work she needs to do. I’m available to help anyone during this hour.

What are my 4, 3, and 9 month old doing during all of this? Playing, sitting up to the table and doing playdoh, listening to read alouds, building with magnet tiles, drawing on the chalkboard or dry erase board, getting into things, typical little kid stuff! And the Kindergartener is always done early in every time block, he has short lessons and then is free to play with these younger 3 brothers. He enjoys being the ‘big brother’ during this time.

At our house we have a 4th, 2nd, and k student. Our school work is divided into 2 areas. Group work includes hymns, poetry, other memory work, history, geography, science, music, art,  and various read aloud books. We manage to usually keep this all within 2 1/2 hours by keeping lessons short and looping lots of  the subjects.

Independent work is our other category for the oldest two.  It includes math, composition, spelling, grammar, Latin,  and some other odds and ends. Many of these subjects are also looped. They are actually “taught” on a weekend night during a 1-2 hr cram session. During this time my hubby teaches all math lessons for the week while I go over their daily checklists for the upcoming week. I also teach any new concepts that need covered in their other subjects.

Every day I set aside 30 min to work with the big 2 kids on any subject that couldn’t be pre-taught on the weekend. They are then allowed to work away at their checklist and NOT interrupt while I teach phonics to kinder one on one. Questions are to be reserved for after they have completed everything they are able to do and I am done with kinder. Grading and going over missed problems is done during weekend cram session.

This may be of little help to you as every family is different. However, these basics will help anyone.

1.  Loop subjects

2. Group as many subjects as possible

2.Train your children to work independently as much as possible.

3.  Train your children to not interrupt while you are teaching siblings.

4. Require all lesson questions to be saved and covered at one or two designated times or at the very least after that subject is done to the best of their ability.

5.  Think outside the box (weekends, weeknights, help from family or friends, older child giving spelling words to younger, etc…)

I hope something in here helps. You can totally do this and still have an afternoon to enjoy outside. If we work hard and start at 7:30 (listening to books over breakfast), we can be done around 1:15.  If you’re like me you will make tweaks to your schedule frequently before finding your flow and will continue to do so as life changes. Give yourself time and grace to figure out what works for YOUR family even if it doesn’t look like anyone else’s.

Have you seen our sample schedule? The Family Work should only take about one hour to complete each day. For the ages of your children, the Indepedent Work for each child should take not more than another hour each day. Your children should be able to work on their Independent Work at the same time with you helping each one as the need arises, much like how Tristan describes how it works in her home.

I think that with the new lesson plan books there are more subjects scheduled than what is on the sample schedule. The Enrichment Studies volumes have the subjects scheduled out to be about an hour each day. The only exception is the day that nature study is scheduled because nature study can take longer than 15-20 minutes, depending on where you go to do nature study and what you find.

Scripture memory is scheduled for each day in the Enrichment Studies. Bible varies how often it is scheduled in the History, Geography, and Bible lesson plans, depending on which time period you are studying. It is scheduled more days per week in the Egypt, Greece, and Rome lesson plans than it is in the other ones.

The Individual Studies books that are currently available have math, science, and language arts scheduled to be not more than one hour a day.

There are more sample schedules under the Plan CM tab. ?