Morning Routine Checklist

My morning checklist (goes with the daily Road Map).

The visuals are helpful because they put the lists in a framework for me and make me more likely to go back and look at them. Lists by themselves usually just stress me ;-).

Daily Road Map

This turned out a bit blurry on the gif, but it's a sort of daily scheduling worksheet (here in doc).

I am not quite happy with it yet, but thought I'd use it for a bit and then revise it.

Things like Morning Routine are associated with another list which wouldn't fit on this page. I pretty much remember most of the things I do in the morning so I don't usually have to glance at the Morning Routine but it is written out for reference.

Sometimes I wonder if I am making simple things too complicated -- I wonder if my predecessors needed notebooks and the like to keep their lives on track. I guess the answer is yes.

Here's one I found online (pdf).

Thursday in Detail

Wednesday in Detail

Tuesday in Detail

I just figured out how to re-code to switch the picture-justification from right to left. Cool!

This is Tuesday in detail. It will need revision because already we are not doing things quite like this (my summer write-out). But I thought I would get it formatted so that next week I can go through it and change what needs to be changed.

I think you have probably noticed I love my Microsoft Word 2007. I never have been a big fan of MS Word but my dad bought me this version for my birthday last year and it's so much fun to work with it. There are still a couple of bugs, but not as irritating as earlier versions.

Details of Mondays

I'm slowly going through the days of the week and trying to list out what "belongs" to that day, for the Year 7 and Year 1 children.

So here is Monday. ... which Kieron (Year 7) and I agreed ought to be the lightest of the days provided that he mostly finished his work the week before.

Most of the things on the list only take 5-10 minutes and most are review/reinforcement type activities.

Is this level of detail necessary? No, it's not. When I had a whole handful in the homeschool, and a baby in arms, I simply did not lay things out so precisely.

Is it helpful? In many ways it is, for someone like me who gets stuck on retrieval. In a book I read by CS Lewis, he spoke of how the ancients tended to divide things into threes -- there was always a "middle ground" between one thing and another. In Catholic thinking, you have "proximate" (close view), "remote" (the big picture or distant goal) and "mediate"(the in between stage). I usually have the most trouble with the middle ground.... that is, how to get from the big picture to the details of daily life, and vice versa. So a lot of this planning I do is about translating my overall goals into something I can actually sit down and work on in daily life.

Clear as mud? LOL. Homeschooling is as simple as a parent, a child, and whatever they are focusing on.... a sort of triangle. All you really need are books, paper, writing and/or drawing implements, the concrete details of daily life, plus a sort of "narrative" -- ongoing conversation and rhythm of relationship, that makes meaning of the concrete details. And time to play and think and explore.

The castle is there on the form to remind me of that -- since I'm a visual right-brained type : ). But I wanted to write it out, too.

September Schedule

I made a schedule for fall. I wanted a simple routine that is easy for me to remember.

Morning Hour is this.

When I say "end with stretching" I am thinking of some of Aidan's therapy routines and also some of what Charlotte Mason called "drill". I'm thinking that then they can have a short break/snack and move to the more individualized seatwork.

Then more exploratory type activities in the afternoon, and down time in the late afternoon when I'm pretty tired.

I can juggle these around, but thinking in blocks of time, I am hoping, will be helpful. Early afternoon is usually when I fit in the household work -- not the laundry and meal prep, which fits in various corners of the day, but my household focused work.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes!

Thinking about My Schedule

An hourly planner (doc)

I fill these out when I'm feeling like too many days are slipping past too much. As I go through the day I jot down what I did during that hour. It helps give me a sense of how the days go.

This is my schedule from last year. It really hasn't changed much for years. This time around, the only real difference is in my approach. I read recently that anything you really want to get done, you should do in the morning, and that made sense to me. So I've been more consciously trying to put the bulk of the things that are really important into the hours between 7 am and 2 pm. Otherwise, they too often slip by.

This means that I try not to spend too many of those hours doing the sort of thing I can fit in no matter what. For example, reading and writing I can fit into any space -- they will always be priorities because my natural tendency runs that way. So I am trying to save those things mostly for the "Lull" hours between 2 pm and 5 pm.

The "Lull" is a new concept for me too. Of course, I always noticed I was pretty much good for nothing between 2 and 5. It's been a constant since my earliest days. During those hours I have a longstanding tendency to retreat into my shell in some form or another. The new thing is that I am trying to recognize this as a pattern and then deal with the situation as it exists. So I'm trying to reserve the quieter activities for those hours -- reading, writing, resting, letting time slip by with the children.

Then there is the second shift. By 5 pm I have to be straightening, prepping dinner, and starting to plan/get ready for the next day. The next few hours are pretty busy -- dinner, supervising Sean's homework, bedtime routine for little ones. Things start slowing down about 10 pm and I can read a bit and hang around with my husband.

So I am newly conscious of those two "Waves" of activity and the little ebb-tide in between.

Here is the summer schedule. The main difference is that we have more formal "schooling" in the morning hours during the fall and winter. And I am getting up quite a bit earlier in order to see Sean off to the school bus.

Summer Plans -- newsletter article

Summer Plans

Many homeschoolers take the summer "off" from school. Even if you school year around, though, summer is usually a time to
(1) relax and refresh oneself after the busy-ness of the year
(2) reorganize and prepare for next year.

Of course, everyone has different ways of going about these processes; the following ideas are meant to give you a start:

1. Look through books and materials for next year. If you haven't bought your curriculum for next year yet, now is a good time to do it. This will give you a chance to look them over before school actually is about to start. You might want to keep a notebook beside you to write down ideas for lesson review, supplemental reading, or notes on how to present the material. It's particularly helpful to note the general goals for the course as stated in the course outline or in the book itself. This becomes the overarching "theme" for that subject for that year. I also spend some time blocking out my calendar for next year, planning vacation time, birthdays, or whatever else I know is in the future.
2. Re-arrange your work space. Were there any strategic problems this year? Pencils not around when you needed them? Loose papers getting lost? Toddler getting into the art supplies? Summer is a good time to tackle these ongoing irritations. It's also a good time to get rid of or store the extra things that are just clutter, and at the same time, make a list of things that are needed, whether school supplies or shelving space. While you are rearranging, it is easy to do a good cleaning. Get your kids involved.
3. Spend time with your family. Every family has different ideas of fun, but all families can benefit both from some lazy, long days and from some fun family activities. My family likes to hike and observe nature close up --you may prefer swimming pools or camping trips. The goal is recharging your batteries and building relationships with each other.
4. Observe your children. While you are spending time having fun with your children, you have a good opportunity to get to know them better. What do they like to do, and choose to do? What are their strengths and weaknesses? As a busy homeschooling mom, sometimes I forget to do this during the school year, but slower times give me a chance to reconnect, and notice what is unique about my particular blessings from God. I like to keep informal notes about what I observe; this is certainly not a necessity though. I find that the more conscious I am of my child's temperament, talents and preferred activities, the easier it is to work with him on academic and spiritual issues. It also is an aid to building a close relationship.
5. Most of all, pray. I saved this for last because it has been by far the most beneficial "summer improvement project" I have done. The suggestions above, and any other summer priorities you have, can be informed and sanctified by offering them to God. Bring your concerns and anxieties to Our Savior and to Our Blessed Mother. Ask them to guide you as you work through your preparations for next year, and to bless your leisure time. Going to some daily Masses as a family, or to an hour of Adoration of the Sacrament, will bring great rewards.

Kolbe recommends a family retreat before the start of each school year. By using your summer projects to reflect on God's plans for your children and your homeschool, you can make the whole summer into a preparation for this retreat and for the next school year.

I hope these ideas give you a start in planning your summer.

Children's Hour

I made this form based on Cindy at Dominion Family's "Morning Time" (this is her old site -- I can't seem to get to her wordpress one right now -- I really hope it isn't down for good since it is a treasury, even though she isn't actively blogging anymore).

I am calling it "Children's Hour" firstly, so I don't totally plagiarize Cindy; and secondly, because Charlotte Mason several times talked about a "Children's Hour" that wasn't directly associated with "school" but rather, with family life.

The form is basically for filling out what I want to be focusing on in each subject area.

I also have this Memory Notebook outline that I made last year based on Trivium Academy's, combined with Cindy's ideas. I already mentioned it here. Also, this Memory Book which includes more links (but is under construction right now). If you don't have MS Word 2007 but want to access the files please leave a comment or email and I'll put up a PDF or doc version.

Quote from Home Education:

Particular Knowledge.––But we are considering lessons as 'Instruments of Education;' and the sort of knowledge of the world I have indicated will be conveyed rather by readings in the 'Children's Hour' and at other times than by way of lessons. I know of nothing so good as the old-fashioned World at Home by Mary and Elizabeth Kirby (for lessons) for children between six and seven.

From Formation of Character

In connection with this subject let me add a word about story-telling. Here are some of the points which make a story worth studying to tell to the nestling listeners in many a sweet "Children's Hour";––graceful and artistic details; moral impulse of a high order, conveyed with a strong and delicate touch; sweet human affection; a tender, fanciful link between the children and the Nature-world; humour, pathos, righteous satire, and last, but not least, the fact that the story does not turn on children, and does not foster that self-consciousness, the dawn of which in the child is, perhaps, the individual "Fall of Man." But children will not take in all this? No; but let it be a canon that no story, nor part of a story, is ever to be explained. You have sown the seed; leave it to germinate. Every father and mother should have a repertoire of stories––a dozen will do, beautiful stories beautifully told....

So from these bare hints I am picturing that she intended something informal -- a sharing of the heart and mind of the mother with her children.... a sharing of family culture, so to speak. I don't want to make it formal or stiff or compartmentalized to a certain literal "hour" but I thought if I centered the idea around a particular "hour" of the morning, we might be able to move from there out into the whole day and life. Hope this makes some sense.

Waldorf calls it Circle Time but this has always sounded so Kindergarten-y to me. Still, some of the Waldorf circle time ideas may work well here.

Summer Time Table

A Summer Schedule by Teri Maxwell (and another one)
A High and Noble Calling: Scheduling in the Summer

I wrote these ones quite a while ago (PDF)

Planning for Summer
Summer Days


Also, Elizabeth's daily rhythm (for fall, but I like the format).

I don't really like that word "schedule". Looking up the etymology, I found it is basically a modern word (at least in its modern usage-- it originally meant something like "piece of paper". It is pretty much associated with the industrial world in its present usage, which probably explains why it seems to me like something you impose on top of things, not something that develops out of something.

So I looked up synonyms and found this:

agenda, agendum, appointments, curriculum, inventory, list, menu, plan, program, programme, prospectus, regime, tariff, timetable.

Charlotte Mason used the word timetable; the Ignatians use the word "agenda" which is basically derived from Latin "agere" and traditionally meant "things needing to be done". In deliberative meetings, the agenda may also be called "the order of the day".

And then there is the monastic "Horarium". Here is an example. I love the word, but wonder if it sounds pretentious to use it in the context of the domestic church. Hmm.

Now, is it just me who has to research etymology and collect all sorts of samples before doing anything as simple as planning a schedule?

I put this together and am going to try to work it for the next week or so, figuring out what I forgot or what doesn't work.

See "basic planning" here.

Schedule for Younger Two

I have been thinking about my little ones. For them, I don't want to have an academic type schedule. I want to focus on habits and baskets : ).

Here is a schedule for a young child from Mater Amabilis:

Monday - Religion, Reading, Painting, Break, Number, Handwork, Geography, Writing

Tuesday - Tales, Number, Handwork, Break, Reading, Singing Games, Writing, Nature Study

Wednesday - Poetry, Reading, Nature Study, Break, Number, Handwork, History, Writing

Thursday - Religion, Number, Handwork, Break, Reading, Singing Games, Writing, Tales

Friday - Tales, Reading, Picture Study, Break, Number, Handwork, Nature Study, Writing

It looks simple and uncluttered. In addition or rather, overlapping, are my "Preschool Priorities".

I am going to try to make lists -- mental or physical "baskets" -- that can help me come up with things for these different areas. I'd like to overlap with the Year 7 topics a bit, just so that (1) the Year 7 child can help design activities for them (he is good at that and enjoys it) and (2) so that my head doesn't explode.

Now, for habits -- this year I want to read Charlotte Mason's ideas on habits, which are traced through all of her books, and come up with some things I want to emphasize and work on.

So the main "goals" for the little ones are goals for myself -- what *I* want to do and think about.

Here is the Level 1 Timetable from Parent's Review














(For "Drill and Dancing" I can think Aidan's physical therapy and work Paddy in there too. For "handicrafts" and writing, brush-drawing etc I can work in his OT goals. and for the other subjects, I can work in his speech goals --- widening vocabulary and organizing skills for the content subjects, oral expression for narration, receptive language for listening to read-alouds).... then visual discrimination for things like nature study and object lessons)

When I have "baskets" or in other words, too many choices -- I get paralyzed, so I'm going to make some tentative sequential lists. But definitely, the curriculum is a lot more open at this age than it is for the older children.

If you take this Goal List (A Formidable List of Attainments) it gives a start on categories:

Nature Study and Local Observation

• to know the points of the compass with relation to their own home, where the sun rises and sets, and the way the wind blows
• to describe the boundries of their own home
• to describe any lake, river, pond, island etc. within easy reach
• to be able to describe 3 walks and 3 views
• to mount in a scrap book a dozen common wildflowers, with leaves (one every week); to name these, describe them in their own words, and say where they found them.
• to do the same with leaves and flowers of 6 forest trees
• to know 6 birds by song, colour and shape
• to tell three stories about their own "pets"--rabbit, dog or cat.
• to keep a caterpillar and tell the life-story of a butterfly from his own observations.

Song and Verse and Language -- Oral Expression

• to recite, beautifully, 6 easy poems and hymns
• to recite, perfectly and beautifully, a parable and a psalm
• to name 20 common objects in French, and say a dozen little sentences
• to sing one hymn, one French song, and one English song

Number, Reading and Writing

• to add and subtract numbers up to 10, with dominoes or counters
• to read--what and how much, will depend on what we are told of the child
• to copy in print-hand from a book

Literature and Narration

• to tell quite accurately (however shortly) 3 stories from Bible history, 3 from early English (or American!), and 3 from early Roman history

Handwork

• to send in certain Kindergarten or other handiwork, as directed

You can see I could break it up differently, to emphasize all the different subjects, but I am trying to keep it simple and targeted towards "habits" rather than a bunch of different "subjects".

Timetable for 2008, Year 7

I am trying to figure out Kieron's daily schedule for next year. It seems to work best for us if there is a basic daily routine with similar lessons in similar time slots every day.

If you look here there are some PUS timetables -- Kieron is Level III. Here is one AO user's daily schedule.

Here is my Timetable 2008 (PDF). We usually playtest it for a couple of weeks and then revise according to the child's feedback and other things that we figure out in the actual implementation : )

Here is a gif of Year 7.

Weaving a Daily Schedule

I was looking back through my archives and found this nice post from The Common Room:

Patterns Instead of Schedules

It seemed to fit in well with what I have been thinking about recently. ... I put it on my other blog but wanted to link it here, too.


Space, and Shelter

Horariums

I made these weekly schedules for the two middle school boys. The top one is for my YEar 9 son and the second one is for my Year 6 son. (you can click on them to make them bigger).

They are really useful ; having them open in my notebook gives me an "at a glance" survey of the order of the day, and for my boys they are useful in seeing what is to be done.

My Year 6 son particularly likes the way his is laid out to give him a slower-paced hour in the middle of the school day. During this hour he has a snack, takes the little ones outside, and/or does a science or art project. While he is doing this, I can stay alongside the older one while he is working in Algebra.

I never laid out my homeschool by the hour before. I thought it would be too regimented, too much like a school system with bells ringing. But it's not. The "hours" sometimes go on longer or shorter than 60 minutes. That is why I don't have it tied to a clock. We usually start at about 9 am but sometimes it is earlier or later. Sometimes we get done before noon and sometimes it takes the whole four hours. So the "hours" are basically just to give a realistic time frame and some sort of order for the subjects.

I built the schedule around the way my boys were most comfortable doing things. My older one likes to wake up and start right in with the more "mechanical" subjects, then read for a while. Then he is ready for Algebra : ) and then he can face the more open-ended subjects like writing. My other son likes to start with listening to a read aloud, sometimes while drawing or coloring, then have a slow and more "exploration" type hour, then finish up with the more precise "discipline" subjects.

One more thing -- my sixth grader's week is laid out so that if he gets everything done during the week, he gets a light day on Monday -- only the read-alouds and math drill and his housecleaning chores. Then we go to the library and market. So he is motivated to keep up with his work during the week so he doesn't have a pile to deal with on his "easy" day.

My Daily Routine for Second Term

I'm adopting Mother Auma's (I think it was her) idea of writing out the daily routine hope/wish/ideal and then putting it on a clipboard.

So here's the one for this term -- it's not all-inclusive of course, but includes some of the things I forget if not reminded:

Morning

• Wake up, pray

• Get dressed, weigh in, swish and wipe toilet
• Tidy upstairs, note things to do later
• Bring laundry down, start a load
• Start fire, make breakfast, tidy kitchen.
• Pray, eat breakfast.
• Have coffee while planning the day -- look over their books if time provides (usually doesn't)
• Talk to kids as they get up and eat breakfast.

----------
8:30 am till about noon

Gather kids -- give them outline of what to do (this varies from day to day)
Help them as needed.
While older ones read, type in log and check email.

--------
Noon
Lunch, chores, supervise chores, switch laundry
Attention for littlies
Bath, ask about their reading and writing (narrations)
Rest
Prayer
-----------------
Afternoon -- Run errands
If there are no errands or places to go:
Nature Walk/Arts and Crafts/Explore closets/Play games/Read Aloud
----------
Evening
Start dinner
Ride bike (exercises), tidy, laundry
DINNER
Kids clean up; family time
Plan a bit for next day
Bedtime Routine:
Prayers, baths, teeth, read alouds, sleep

Day 54: Life and (some) learning

This was our schedule for this week. Grey is travel time; Sunday is marked yellow to visually remind me that it is a "set apart" day; lilac-colored is appointments, and the orange section is when I go with the littlies to pick up my older children and visit our long time friends. (My husband and teenage son are staying at home; they work at home, so I'm not publicly identifying an empty house).

Next week will be much the same.

I'm rather proud that we still managed to fit the exams and games and everything around the corners of this. Usually I'm OK if mornings are free, but morning appointments are hard on our homeschooling. I get very car sick as do the children so trips into town play havoc with the rest of the day.

That is a drawback to living in the mountains. There are plenty of advantages to counter-balance that, though.

Aidan gets a flu shot because he is immunesuppressed and three years ago when he caught the flu, he had to go to the hospital for several days and hang out in an overflow ward with many other coughing, sneezing, throwing-ups kids separated only by curtains from each other. It was no fun. So he gets the flu shot every year.

Last week was his very first dental intervention EVER (he is eight). Long long story; the short version is that he had severe oral defensiveness and received nourishment from a G Tube till only a year and a half ago. I did not want his mouth to be messed with until I thought it would not set him back with his feeding. The other thing is that he is post liver transplant and needs to load up heavily with antibiotics before a routine dental visit.

But anyway, he had two cavities and that was it. They were filled on Tuesday. When you think of his poor nutritional status for so many years (while on IV nutrition, g tube feeding, drinking juice and sprite while recovering from surgeries, and the fact that I let him eat all sorts of "fun" food when he was trying to learn to eat, like froot loops and M&Ms) -- well, it's perfectly wonderful to me that he didn't have a mouthful of caries. (That is another secret reason I was procrastinating on the intervention -- because I was afraid there would be all sorts of work needing to be done.) So anyway, thank you, God.

I am counting our days of visiting these friends as "school" days because they are guaranteed to be very enriching days. So: Today is Day 54, tomorrow is Day 55... and that makes next week, Week 12 and the end of the term. Hooray!

Day 23-- Lessons in Pictures

Today went like this.

Yes, so the kids have figured out how to extend the schoolday -- not quite the way I was planning.

(really, though, unschooling for a year taught me the preciousness of the off-beat or Very Odd moments -- things do eventually get done)


In addition to our normal "dailies" of Math, Latin, Greek, vocabulary/handwriting, which you probably are familiar with by now, we had styrofoam and box battles, styrofoam stacking, and played with/worked out on the exercise bike.



I did phonics with Aidan and Paddy again. This really slows down the momentum of the schoolday -- perhaps a good thing for now, but I will know what to rearrange if the lessons start going on too long.

Our routine is to read a Bob book or some other book, pick out some of the words, then go to pad and pencil and write little phonograms, words and stories with Aidan and Paddy in them. They like this. We'll see how it does in the effectiveness department. Another extension might be what we did last week -- painting words in watercolors -- or what we did a bit of last year -- associating the ASL signs with the letters. I am also looking through A Writing Road to Reading since one weakness of our literacy program in the past was that the kids all got miles ahead in reading compared to writing. It takes till about junior high or early high school for the gap to start narrowing, and then the kids become accomplished writers. This might just be normal for our family, but I do think I would feel a bit more comfortable if the writing kept better pace with the reading.

Since the boys have their Bionicles out and the littlies are happily pestering them right now, I have time to upload some pictures. Here is our continent matching game -- (I wish I had taken a better picture of the contents of the baggie, but it is labels for the continents and major oceans, plus some cut-outs of the shapes of the individual continents along with their size in square miles). Now that they are labelling with ease, I am having them assemble the continents sort of like a puzzle, and for a place value exercise I had Kieron put the continents in order of size.



Here is our Latin matching:

I am making similar ones for the noun declensions. I needed something like Quia that we could do for grammar, since they are at the point where it's harder to improvise your way through the sentences in Henle.

Here is Kieron's daily checklist -- I don't write them out every day anymore, just when life is crazy enough that I can't get him through the routine with verbal directions.

Monday is the day he reads a new chapter in Faith and Life, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday I go through the quiz with him -- he answers the questions he knows, and then I have him look up the ones he didn't know. Then according to how he does, I make religious lesson plans for the rest of the week -- for example, this week he was fuzzy on the mysteries for the Rosary (he used to know them but we lapsed family rosaries recently....sigh) so I am brainstorming ways to present these for him.

Here is the math for boys who quickly get tired of using a pencil.

The red and blue cards are for the top numbers in the problem, you know, the addends and all those terms I can never remember. The green bar is for the equation bar. The beige numbers are for the answer. The orange cards are to carry ones and twos and so on. There are some tiny green cards which have dots to represent the decimal points, and so on.

He does addition and subtraction this way (as a warm-up and introduction, not usually for the entire lesson) -- dealing with 5 digit numbers and with column addition. Now I am using them to review multiplying large numbers. I wrote some 0's on some more orange cards to help him with place value concepts in multiplying. You can also use them for estimating and for constructing biiig numbers up to the trillions. Of course, this is not really hands on. We are not really working with manipulatives at his age. He gets the concepts fine, but because of his fine motor control he has trouble lining up columns and he gets very sloooww. So we can buzz through problems quickly using the cards and then I send him off with a few easier ones to write out and work on his own.

Tomorrow is an errand running day. So I have to figure out whether we'll just let it be a Life Learning Day, or whether to plan something that they can do independently in spare corners of the day.

Oh! One more thing. Another little projected change in the rhythm of the day... take the "babies" outdoors after the older kids' lessons. By that time they usually need the attention, though I personally long to go off by myself and type this, then take a bath and rest a bit. So I'm considering that.








The snake Kieron found last Friday.

Rhythm for the Day

Thoughts on Lesson Planning -- how timely.

That's what I have been trying to do all weekend.

I THINK I am making progress. We will see on Monday. That's when I either realize I am prepared or that I have been fooling myself.

Anyway, I wrote a proposed Rhythm for the day. (I am putting it in the sidebar). We are not there yet. We do the early morning stuff and then basically move straight to the afternoon. I'd like to have some sort of second wave in the morning so my task this week will be to try to work that in and/OR figure out if it is practicable right now.

The other thing I did was to cut up some colored cardstock into 3.5 X 2 inch rectangles. On them I wrote all the different things I could think of that I wanted to do sometime during a week. My plan is to shuffle them and randomly draw some number of them per day for the week. I wrote about something like this before: Grab Bag and Grab Bag II.

Tomorrow some of us are travelling south to visit Liam at TAC -- so I'll probably be spending the car time thinking more about planning.

Mapping out the Day

Here is our basic daily routine.

Here are some PUS Timetables that were useful to me last year in planning a CM-y flow to the day and week.

Today I wrote a few notes as we walked through our easy-ish first day of school. Part of the reason for starting gradually is simply because it's an advantage we have over those who are going to a school building; we can take off to the beach right after lunch. And another part of the reason, honestly, is that I'm easily intimidated, and starting off slow is better than waiting, and waiting, until things are just perfect (and they never are, and the pressure builds). Finally, starting off gradually gives me a chance to scribble notes, and that is what I do. I scribble about the glitches, the blank spaces, the moments when several needed attention, the way the kids reacted to what we did (for better or worse). I do this for several days, and I go back to doing it whenever we hit a slow or difficult spot during the school year. I don't know where I read about doing this (I think it was in Evaluating for Excellence) but it has worked well for me.

So anyway, this is what I scribbled about a possible homeschool schedule for this year:

8 am Make breakfast, supervise chores
8:30 Work with Aidan a bit on reading and math -- give him something he and Paddy can do on his own.
9 am Religion (start off by prayer and reading aloud, then go from there)
9:30 Math for Sean and Kieron-- help as needed (they can finish in their own time)
10 am Sean and Kieron work on Latin with Clare -- I can work with littlies on literature themes.
10:30 Clare does Nature Study twice a week with Kieron; on the other days, do something science-related -- reading, or drawing in sketchbook, or lab
11 am Break, Activity --
11:15 Language Arts, ending with freewriting or copywork/dictation (see Bravewriter) -- also, Greek and Logic and drawing during this time.

around noon-- break

1 pm I go outside with little ones -- olders come with us or stay at home and do independent reading (see PUS Timetables for choice of subjects).
2 pm Narrations ??? (little ones do project)

3 pm -- I rest or run errands.

Wow, the day fills up fast.

I've never really had a chronological timetable for the morning hours before.... usually the morning is just about Getting Things Done, with a few built-in pegs like Reading after Breakfast. I thought I'd try it because the boys seemed to sort of like the idea and it might help keep things going a bit. I'm not attached to it, and if it gets artificial, I'll drop it.

I told Kieron that if he has eaten and done his morning jobs before 9 am he can work on his story, or read, or play, but that he should stay off the computer until the afternoon.


I made a list of other things I'd like to include -- I like the list of Prince Caspian's education:

"He learned sword-fighting and riding, swimming and diving, how to shoot with the bow and play on the recorder and the theorbo, .... besides Cosmography, Rhetoric, Heraldry, Versification, and of course, History, with a little Law, Physic, Alchemy, and Astronomy. Of Magic he learned only the ehtory, for Doctor Cornelius said the practical part was not proper study for princes. "And I myself," he added, "am only a very imperfect magician and can do only the smallest experiments." Of Navigation ("which is a noble and heroical art" said the Doctor) he was taught nothing, because King Miraz disappoved of ships and the sea."