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Scheduling subjects in a day
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I’ve watched the Living and Learning DVD’s and read various things on scheduling to use different areas of the brain to help keep focused attention. Yet, for some reason, I’m still struggling to arrange our subjects. Other than spreading out the reading/narrating over the course of the day, can anyone give me other guidelines to help in knowing what subjects to schedule before/after each other and which to spread out?
Thanks,
Rebecca
I’m working on this right now Rebecca – I actually have pieces of paper with each subject all over my white board to physically arrange and rearrange (similar to how Sonya showed in the dvds). What I think I may do next is write on those papers what each uses (seeing, reading, talking, writing, movement, etc) to make it even easier to see what is going on. 🙂 I could color code them but my kids would just laugh at me. I’ll share when I have more time.
I do it with mini index cards, color coded. However, I’m going to use colored post it notes this year to avoid fly aways.
I’d forgotten about using the strips of paper to arrange and rearrange. I’ll definitely have to do that. Thanks for the reminder, Tristan!
But how do you figure out what they use? For example, math – it’s writing but what else? Copywork – is that just writing? Or writing and something else? Would putting math and copywork next to each other be okay or should they be separated? How about forein language?
I don’t know why this is SO hard for me to wrap my brain around but it is beyond me right now! It’s probably not this hard but…
Okay, here is how I think of it in my head:
Math is writing and number problem solving. So the items on either side should not be number heavy (no physics for an older child next to math lessons) and something that doesn’t use much writing might be preferable, so reading or art instead of copywork (though copywork IS different because it is writing words, it is still writing and for those who find handwriting a chore it would be good to have these spaced out).
Okay, another way to think of it that may help:
Divide subjects into these groupings:
- fine motor skills (copywork or lots of writing, numbers)
- visual/observation skills (picture study, nature study)
- auditory/oral (listening to history and narrating, listening to a family read aloud and narrating, composer study, foreign language)
- reading
- movement (PE, nature walks, handicrafts, art -making it)
Alternate through the groups in varying ways, trying to not do a long stream of one group in a row.
Is that helpful?
Christie,
Mine are papers on the dry erase board with sticky tacky so they don’t fly away – of course the kids have had fun rearranging them too…LOL.
Will this help any??
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/idea-to-help-w-transition-into-cm
I wanted to just add a little of what I do. I use to write each subject and when (we have 7 kids to schedule around). This in my OCD organized way was beautiful, to ME! It never worked for one reason or another. When I let it go, it just flowed. So now here’s what I do.
We do family studies, any and all of them together 1st thing after breakfast. Then I let those go who don’t need to stay – so say we do bible, character, poetry – we’re all together, then I can let my older ones go and do science with those who are 5th gr and younger.
At this point – then there is a bit of scheduling. Meaning I have blocks of time to work with those who still need mom. At this point I still have 3 who need me daily (everyone for spelling once a week). Now I can’t work with 3 at a time and I have older kids, so while I work with 1 child the other 2 are either doing independent work at the table if they can, having quiet play in the same room OR working with an older sibling. This way the olders learn how to teach, lead and help mom. They all know what time I will need them, who they will be working with and what they are expected to do.
So lets say Monday family studies is done – I am with child 1 and child 2 is playing quiet on the floor, child 3 might be reading aloud to oldest sibling for 10 minutes.
Oh, and i have set times for the computer. We have 2 computers for typing, grammar (it’s a computer program) and typed narration. I have 5 kids using these computers so again I just say child 5 uses the comptuer daily at 9, child 3 might use it at 10. That way they know how to schedule their work and they aren’t all fighting at the end of the day to ‘finish’ their school cause they waited till the end of the day for computer work (which happened for one week and that was DONE) lol
Once the children are doing 95% of the work on their own I let them decide what subject they want to do and in what order. When I use to schedule it all out they became fustrated. Now everyone gets everything done and no more whining.
That’s my way that’s been working for us for 3 years now and I haven’t been happier!
Misty – I’ve been working with our subjects this weekend and ended up color coding based on something similar to yours – family work, group work that involves certain children, etc. I’m not at all rigid about times subjects are to be done, we simply have set ‘school work’ hours and this year kids did their work in any order they wished during that time. However we ran into many instances where one child was ready to do a subject and I wasn’t available but they had finished all their other work, or two children who work together in a subject were not both ready to work at the same time. Then the child who was ready would have some quiet play time and the other child didn’t, we got to work as soon as they were ready, and they felt it was unfair. It just caused a bit more tension than necessary. We also did not do family work first in the day always and that was even worse…LOL! If I was ready to do family work (aka, the new baby was taken care of, fed, and diapered, Mason had been cathed, had his morning physical therapy, and I had checked chores and maybe even showered) then the other kids were all at different points in their work and not at a stopping place.
That long ramble just to say we’ll be organizing things a bit differently this year to help. 😉
I spent sometime this weekend getting a schedule written up. It actually came together fairly easily once I understood the subject divisions. Yeah for that!
Last year, I ran into similar issues that Tristan did. Some kids were ready but others weren’t. Or they all wanted me at the same time. Or everyone would be working on their own thing so I would start something else and then someone would need me (finally stopped trying to do anything else but that was frustrating too because I felt like I was always waiting around and wasting a lot of time). It was a bit too crazy!
So, at this point, I did actually schedule everything out. I’m sure we’ll flex as we get into the year a bit. But doing the schedule let me deal with some issues before we even started.
We have one computer and 3 kids need it for math, 2 need it for typing so I was able to spread those out. I was also able to assign different older kids to the baby (16 months and into EVERYTHING) during the times I was needing to work with someone 1 on 1.
Plus, I did schedule things according to the brain areas used which I think will really help my kids. I know at least some of them were doing all their reading/narrating at once and, I’m sure, going slower because of the attention issue.My 16 year old is on his own for scheduling except for when he can get on the computer and when I need him to play with the youngest. I will probably let the 12 and 13 year olds change their schedule after a while – once I feel they understand the brain areas stuff. But for now, we’re going to try the schedule I wrote up to see if it helps with last years issues!
I only have two children, so I don’t run into the scheduling conflicts quite the same as some of you. However, I used to teach 20 students in a classroom at one time, so I thought I’d share something that was useful for me. I divided my students into five groups and assigned each group a day of the week. On Monday, I would meet one one one with the students in the Monday group. So, for instance, if it was writing time, all students were writing, but I met with the Monday students to discuss their writing, help them edit, etc. (not CM methods, but you could adapt..). During silent reading time, I met with the students for that day individually to read aloud to me. This was in a second grade classroom. My point is that everyone had a specific day to meet with the teacher. Perhaps, in a homeschool everyone could have a specific time of day to meet with the teacher? just thought I’d share.
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