Our Yearly Schedule
Usually we just school until I feel like we need a break. This is good (flexible) and bad (if I don't pay attention we can get burned out because I forget to take a break). This year we are beginning with a purposeful work and break plan. We're doing a Sabbath week schedule. We will do school for 6 weeks and then take a break for the 7th week. This means I will do my planning in 6 week chunks too. I've got an overall year's plan, but I only have to work out specifics for 6 weeks at a time. The break week will be a wonderful time to regularly evaluate how kids are doing on reaching their goals and choose new goals when needed.Our Daily Schedule
We've always been pretty scheduled with set wake up and school times. The high schooler is up at 5:20am and out the door by 5:40am for a seminary class, then returns home around 7:15am. The rest of the kids are up around 6:30am and our day runs from there with breakfast, chores, and school.For the first 6 week term this year we are trying something a lot more relaxed and outside my comfort zone. We aren't changing our summer wake up time. Kids have to be out of bed by 9am. Now, many of my children still wake up between 6am and 7am, but some do not, and in winter more are likely to sleep past 7am. The high schooler is welcome to go back to bed and sleep after seminary until 9am if she wants to.
Once 9am is here kids are up and need to eat breakfast and start their school day. I will be available to help as needed. Group subjects will happen after anchor points like snack time. School will trickle over into our afternoons - unless a child happens to be one of the early risers who wants to start school before other kids are awake. I'm great with that too.
I do have a couple reasons I wanted to try this daily schedule change. Here are some of those reasons for the curious:
- Sleep - Who doesn't need more sleep? Makayla specifically doesn't get enough sleep during the school year and it shows in her health, constantly dealing with one cold/cough after another once her allergy season begins. I could use a bit more sleep sometimes too, being up early for Seminary and up at night with little ones.
- Better attitudes - while some of my kids wake cheerfully there are a couple who are best left to themselves to wake up in the morning.
- Flexibility - some of my kids work best first thing in the morning while others really hit their stride late morning or even early afternoon.
- One on One Lesson Time - I'll be able to do one on one lessons spread out over more hours of the day, when each child works best. This will hopefully ease up the queue of children waiting for mom too because I know some will keep doing early morning school work while others won't get started until the early risers are finishing up.
What is your yearly or daily homeschool schedule? Are you trying anything different this year?
Those ARE big changes! I'll be interested to follow you through the year and see how they work out.
ReplyDeleteWe're constantly adjusting around here as kids grow, seasons change, and teen get more and more independent. I still don't have a sense of just how the year ahead will work for us, but some of the bones are starting to take shape. I do know that we'll keep Academy and Symposium (I was seriously considering dropping Symposium) and work around several out of the home classes each week.
Those changes aught to be awesome! I can't wait to see how it turns out!
ReplyDeleteI really haven't sat down to map out our schedule for the upcoming year yet. But, our daily schedule will probably be much the same as usual with us starting around ten am and finishing no later than two pm ... but we're trying to make Friday mainly a project day here this year.