Back to School

What a great back-to-school week this has been!  After our much-needed three-week Christmas break and Texas vacation, we have had, I think, our best homeschool week ever.  And I know why.  I brought my trusty laptop to Texas (of course) and on the way home, I worked up a new school schedule for us.  So far, it's great.
Schedule, schmedule--big deal, right?  Well, we've always had schedules, and I've tried a few different formats of checklists and stuff to help the kids, and me, keep track of our progress.  This time, using my master-homeschooler friend Jill's schedule as a template, I think I've hit upon just the right level of detail.

Here's an excerpt from Monday (each weekday is a bit different):

	WWD	MRD	KLD
7:30	Breakfast	Breakfast	Breakfast
	Morning Circle	Morning Circle	Morning Circle
8:00	Math	Piano	Reading
			Language Arts
8:30	Piano	Math	Math
9:00	Spelling	Language Arts	Piano
	Logic
9:30	Recess	Recess	Recess
10:00	Language Arts	Spelling	Spelling
		Logic
10:30	Chore break	Chore break	Chore break

Pretty good, eh?  I've always resisted laying out our time in such detail; I guess I've been afraid it would be too stressful, or too structured, and I've told myself that I liked being freeform and flexible.  Well, freeform and flexible is great, but this is better.  Now everyone knows exactly what they're supposed to be doing at all times.  There is less arguing about what to do next, less time lost looking for books and pencils, way more school getting done, and if we want to blow off the schedule for some reason (which hasn't happened this week so much), we can easily jump right back in.  Each child has his own schedule, which they all love, and I have a master schedule.

I can already see a few things I want to tweak, though.  To tell you the truth, so far we've always been running late because Mom needs more time to get ready in the morning.  This schedule depends on me being up at 6 a.m., which hasn't happened this week.  I can't decide if I should just adjust the schedule back half an hour, or keep striving for the discipline to get my lazy bum out of bed on time!  (If you're voting for the latter, I must say that for my whole life, even when I was a bigshot business lady like my kids think I was, it was always easy for me to get up at 6:30, and nearly impossible to get up right at 6.  Biorhythms, maybe??)  Also, I like to spend a bit of time chatting with Bill in the morning before the kids are awake, and this start time doesn't allow for that so much.  I think I might give it another week like this, and see how it goes.

Also, 30 minutes is not really enough time for breakfast and morning circle--today I was reading and discussing our saint of the day and this week's Gospel reading while frying eggs and toasting toast.  The kids take forever to eat, though, and I want to set a limit on eating time--otherwise they just keep on eating and eating as long as I'll keep cooking stuff!!

I also want to put more time in for one-on-one work with KLD.  It seems to me that if you get the early stuff down well, the later subjects go much more smoothly.  KLD and I need to continue to work hard this spring on reading, especially.

On the plus side, I think our piano teacher will be blown away this week, because they've all been practicing a lot more than usual!  We truly have gotten more school done than ever, including a whole history lesson as well as a whole science lesson with two labs and a little writeup, in addition to math and language every day, full spelling lessons and tests for all, work on the typing tutor software for the older two, literature read-alouds every day at lunch, starting our vocabulary word roots curriculum that I've been wanting to get to forever, MRD starting a new American history book we've been planning, and lots of review and cramming for our homeschool Geography Bee.  Pretty good, huh?  I even managed to squeeze in exercise for myself, which is truly amazing, AND even make real dinner for us every night (one night we went out for pizza to celebrate the results of the Geography Bee). :)

The two little boys just bounce around fitting into the schedule.  I've left enough time, mostly, for nursing, feeding, and getting MPD up and down from his naps, and JPD gets involved in our history, science, and read-alouds, all of which happens mostly in the afternoons.  He's been pretty good at playing in the mornings when he doesn't have preschool, although I have let him play on the computer and watch movies a little bit more than I'd like.  As he gets older he'll have more & more little scheduled things to do too.

So, that's our homeschool's new year, starting off so great!  I feel like I'm finally "getting" what Holly Pierlot's talking about with regard to schedules in her Mother's Rule of Life, and finding what works for me related to the book Managers of their Homes.  Of all the schedules I've tried, having this one for school, which fits in with our bigger and littler schedules for the rest of the stuff we do, is just right.