Archive for Organizing and Scheduling
Our Home School Schedule(ish) for 2010-2011
Posted by: | CommentsI hold to our schedule lightly in order to keep myself sane. Well, close to sane as the case may be. I thought I’d try to share with you what our daily schedule sort of looks like….although it really isn’t a schedule. It’s hardly even an order of events. This will just be a little glimpse into what our days look like if we don’t have a field trip or a PE class or a leaky dishwasher or a hang nail.
(In case you’re interested, here’s a look at our schedule for 2009-2010 and our schedule for 2008-2009.)
And now for 2010-2011…
Our schedule has changed from year to year, but one thing has stayed the same: We always read the Bible at breakfast. We LOVE starting our kids’ day like this. We are currently reading a chapter of Matthew together, then reading a section from Why Pray? (Why Pray? is a GREAT read by the way!) Our older boys also read their Bibles on their own each morning before they come downstairs for breakfast.
After breakfast/Bible reading begins a general organized hubbub. If possible, I sit down with Justus and Elias right after breakfast and read History and work through Spelling words. (You can see a list of their books and curriculum here.) Malachi (Kindergarten) heads off to play Legos or super heros or army guys or something else very manly. Asa begins his reading assignments for the day. He works on his own for most of the morning, making his way through his history books, literature and math. Once I’ve finished History and Spelling with Justus and Elias, they do their individual work (handwriting, math, phonics, vocabulary).
IF by chance all the boys are working on their own without trouble at this point of the morning (of course I am available to answer questions at any time), I will start some laundry, wash some dishes, have a conversation with my husband (joy!), cook something, or scrub some unidentified gooey substance from the kitchen floor.
If I can, I try to put a big, nice meal on the table for lunch. Matt often works evenings, so I want to send him off with a healthy meal. I am finding that having good pre-made food in the freezer is a HUGE help for me since I don’t always have time to cook a big meal from start to finish during school time. Pulling something from the freezer and throwing some veggies on the table with it has been a life saver!!
While we’re eating lunch, Matt works with us on memory verses. Have I ever written about how we do “repeat afters”? Why have I not ever written about how we do “repeat afters”? I’ll put that on my list. It’s so simple, yet so effective.
While we’re doing “repeat afters”, I stuff my lunch down. Then, while the boys are still eating (because eating is an art form for them), I will read from our latest science book, then from our latest “read-aloud” book. They generally finish eating while I’m reading, but we all just sit around the table enjoying the books. I LOVE reading during meal times!!!
After lunch, before the boys scatter…we’ll do a quick grammar lesson (Grammar Ace) or art lesson (Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad). After that, I sit with Asa and help him finish his History, Spelling and Science lessons. This has been a really great time with my teenager! While I’m doing this with Asa, Justus and Elias set the timer for 25 minutes and sit down in a quiet room to read. Malachi has gone back to his Legos again.
Somewhere in there, we send Matt off to work (or soccer practice, depending on the day). Then finally, I call Malachi in to do his school work. I don’t do every subject with him every day. I don’t find it necessary. The main thing is that he gets it all done eventually…and he’s getting some one-on-one time with Mama.
Now keep in mind that this order of events is how an “ideal” day looks. I’m actually finding that by staying very laid back about our schedule has helped all of us stay stress-free during the day! Sometimes we’re still finishing up some of our lessons at 8 pm. Sometimes we don’t get everything finished and have to carry our work over to the next day.
I have given up assigning a “time schedule” to our days. I pretty much HATED having a schedule that said, “Science 9:00-9:30; History 9:30-10:00…” We could NEVER stick to a schedule like that (read here if you want to know why) and it always made me a Frantic Freaked-Out Mama. NO ONE wants to do school work with a Frantic Freaked-Out Mama! Not even me.
I think that the main point is to just get everything done (mostly) and to keep the most important things the most important things. I don’t want my kids to remember school days with a Frantic Freaked-Out Mama. I want them to remember “repeat afters” and reading with Mama while they eat lunch and snuggling on the couch to learn about Abraham Lincoln.
We get it all done somehow…so it doesn’t really matter what time the clock says, does it?
Here are some other posts you may be interested in reading about how we used to accomplish “school” when we had littler guys and babies in the house!
Homeschool Hubbub: Flexibility is Good
Posted by: | CommentsInterested to know what a perfect day looks like at our house while we follow the awesome organized schedule I have set up for us? Yeah, me too. I’ll be sure to let you know what that looks like just as soon as we have one of those.
Want to know what a real day looks like at our house? Now that I can tell you about. Messy, loud, fun, frustrating, silly, scattered, satisfying…those are the kinds of days we usually have. Schedule? Yes we have one…just because we have to have SOMETHING to go by so that we can accomplish SOMETHING. But if I were to force us each day to stick to the exact schedule…I would make all of our lives miserable. Especially my own.
I’ve learned through these past eight years of homeschooling to keep our days flexible. To write down what I’d like a school day to look like and then to follow the plan loosely. Because just about the time I finally get all of my children in the room at the same time, settle them comfortably into their spots on the couches with pillows, wait for all of them to look up expectantly at me so that I can begin reading an enlightening chapter from our latest history book…someone is going to have to go to the bathroom.
And while that someone is in the bathroom, another someone will remember that he forgot his pencil but on his way to go get it he will see the Lego man on the steps that he had been missing and then he will accusingly ask which of his other brothers left the Lego man on the stairs when clearly Lego men are not allowed out of the Lego room because this is how we lose Lego people and the other brothers (the ones that are not in the bathroom) will run to see which Lego man it is and then they will all go to the Lego room, forget all about history and start to build a space ship.
In the meantime, the phone will ring with a call I can’t ignore and by the time I can corral them all back into the living room for history a good forty-five minutes will have passed and we’ll all finally get settled back down again…just in time for someone else to need to go to the bathroom.
These are the days of our lives.
I work very hard to keep our school days free of outside appointments, and I almost never answer the phone while we’re schooling…but sometimes things can come up that are out of my control. We have to roll with it. (No, boys! I did not say that you could roll and wrestle all over the art materials which are on the floor…I meant roll with the schedule! Get off the sketchbooks!!!)
Somehow our children are learning in spite of all of the “life” that is going on around us.
Hey, it would appear that “life” is what they need to be learning about anyway.
Well, I’m so glad I worked that into the schedule. ;)
Oh Look. My Closet Has a Floor.
Posted by: | CommentsOur closet has some major issues. It has a big sloped ceiling (because it is under a set of stairs). It has lots of stuff in it and it is used mainly by little boys who don’t like to put their stuff where it goes.
A few weeks ago, I actually heard my closet having a panic attack. After weeks of wintertime apparel being thrown haphazardly all over its floor and after being chosen time after time as “the best hiding spot” in Hide-And-Go-Seek and after the unfortunate “where are the tennis balls I KNOW I put them somewhere in the back with the golf clubs last summer” incident…
Well, if I had to suffer this kind of treatment all winter long, by February I’d look terrible and suffer a panic attack too.
Almost looks worse than my hair when I walk the five yards from my front door
to the mailbox on a 45 mile per hour windy day in March, doesn’t it?
At least there are some possible solutions for organizing the closet. My hair on a windy day? Well…let’s just stick with attainable goals shall we?
I started by cleaning out all of the unused contents of the closet. There are six people who share this closet and four of them are boy children who like to play in snow…but do we really need nine pairs of snow boots? And can anyone actually fit into these little baby sized boots anymore? And why do we have so many coats? I am SO thankful for hand-me-downs, but how about we only keep the coats that currently fit someone and put the other sizes into tubs in the attic? (Although those coats will have to be taken to the attic by my brave and fearless husband because I’m still suffering bird-in-the-face trauma).
So, paring down to one coat and pair of boots (and one pair of gloves and one hat and one scarf) per person…plus some snow suits and roller blades and heelies…
The tubs in our closet now look like this:
I realize it doesn’t look like much of an improvement…but trust me…it is.
Big fat coats and snow suits take up an incredible amount of space. Multiply coats, snowsuits and boots by my four children and two entire tubs are full.
Why, you might ask, are you putting all of these items in tubs? Did we or did we not recommend hooks???
Yes, you did indeed recommend hooks, but I actually have very little wall space in my closet because of the sloped ceiling. I do have a few hooks, but they are quite high. And any other wall space that might sport a hook is directly behind where the big coats hang. Hooks, unfortunately aren’t working for me as a solution this time.
My two big rubbermaid tubs fit nicely into the sloped space. The kids (after being gently reminded and then lovingly threatened with losing prized lego possessions) now remember to NEVER AGAIN put their coats on the floor, but to ALWAYS put their coats and boots in the correct tubs under the slope.
See, coats in one tub and boots, roller blades in the other tub…gloves and hats in the crate.
Daddy’s boots get to go on the floor,
because he’s the daddy and Mommy said it was okay.
Since the hooks are a little bit too high for the little guys, I assigned one hook to our oldest/tallest son (who would never dream of putting his coat on the floor in the first place). I’m using the other hooks for my shopping bags so that they don’t get mixed in with the kid’s boots.
And there you go.
Are you impressed? Probably not. Tubs and crates are really not that exciting. Someone who utilized some really adorable and trendy looking storage containers should totally win this challenge.
But after several weeks of not seeing the floor of my closet and being incredibly frustrated with my children every time I need a shopping bag and have to dig for five minutes under muddy snow boots…I’m pretty stinkin’ excited.
Oh and also, I haven’t heard any panicky sounds coming from my closet for days. In fact, if I listen very closely I actually hear the occasional, “aaahhhh.”
This post is linked to Organizing Your Way.
A Day in the Life…sort of
Posted by: | CommentsEver since I wrote this post about our homeschool schedule and promised to do a “Day in the Life” post…I’ve been TRYING to take pictures of a day in our life.
Wow…I didn’t realize how tricky that job would be. The days of our lives are um…eventful. Especially during soccer season. I had a hard time taking a picture journal of one entire day.
Long story short…I couldn’t make it happen. SO…instead I decided to use all the pictures I’ve taken in the past several days of our lives to give you a feel for what our days look like. You’ll see that they really don’t look very much like this schedule…ever. That’s okay…that’s the beauty of homeschooling and being flexible and letting go of the idea that everything will be blissful and perfect and charming when you are a parent. (That was me doing a little self talk…telling myself that it’s okay to let some things go and realize that not everything will be blissful and perfect and charming as I parent my children.)
Here are all the boys eating pancakes for breakfast. Even though our days can look quite different when it comes to the schedule…we always work to make time for our Breakfast/Bible Reading time.
After breakfast we try to do some of our “together” work. On Mondays and Wednesdays this is usually the time we work on our Geography Packets. On this particular day, the boys were learning more about the natural resources in each state. Guess what? Nebraska produces a lot of corn. Bet you never knew that, huh? :)
I let the boys choose a quiet activity while I read History to them. Of course…the day I took this picutre they decided to color. Probably because I had mentioned in this post that my boys almost NEVER sit quietly and color. Had to prove me wrong, didn’t they?
Next, the boys work on some of their individual work. Here, Elias is working on his handwriting. This can take anywhere from five to twenty mintues. Five if I don’t remind him that the point of working in a handwriting book is to LEARN TO WRITE NEATLY. Twenty if he uses his handwriting book to learn to write neatly. ehem
Elias (2nd grade) usually needs help with his math…so here we are working on it. A special thanks to photographer Justus. And I suppose after looking at this picture it’s apparent that I don’t usually take the time to do anything with my hair on a typical school day? Yeah, it’s not in the schedule.
I actually got some Pre-K time with Malachi on this day. I sort of sat in the middle between Elias and Malachi and worked with both of them at the same time.
Asa hides out in an upstairs bedroom to work on his math. We found that it cuts his math time in half if he’s alone in an upstairs room vs. if he’s down in the kitchen where there are always lots of distractions.
One day after Justus finished his independent work…he mixed up cookies for a post-season soccer party he was to have with his team. The party wasn’t until the weekend, but we talked about how busy our upcoming weekend was going to be and decided to make them mid-week and freeze them. MAYBE he’s learning to plan ahead? Maybe.
Sometime in the afternoon everyone sits down for reading time. From the quality of this picture…it kind of looks like I make everyone read in the dark, doesn’t it?
Elias was sitting across the room and I couldn’t get all of the readers in one picture. This cutie is going to town with chapter books this year!
By the time school was over one of the days last week, Malachi had managed to empty the contents of two (or three) toy bins. Here he is (ever so cheerfully) picking up 300 toys. sigh
I think this picture sums up our days quite nicely. I took this last Wednesday right before I tried to cook dinner in this mess. It was our last 70 degree day before we knew it was going to get cold. SO…I left the dishes and the rest of our school work and all afternoon we worked outside to pull in all of our peppers and tomatoes and okra and potatoes. Oh, and we went and picked apples at someone’s farm too. After working for HOURS outside, then bringing it all in…here’s what the kitchen looked like. Shew!
This picture with Malachi and the produce is much cuter than the whole messy kitchen picture. See…that box there is tomatoes. We picked three bags of apples…three buckets of peppers. Somehow the potatoes didn’t make it into the pic. Just when I thought I was done canning for the year…woohoo more applesauce and salsa! :)
Some of you have asked how long our school day takes. Every day is different. Sometimes reading History takes ten minutes…sometimes it takes an hour. Usually we are finished by 2:30 or so (if we start about 9ish). That’s with taking a lunch break and a short play break. Often it depends on how focused the boys are on their independent work.
And there you have it. A day (or so) in our lives. Although there were lots of things I didn’t show you like lunch and dinner and evening and cleaning up and answering the phone and going to soccer games and sliding down the stairs on sleeping bags…
Really, you should all just come for a visit.
Would Someone Please Hand Me a Schedule?
Posted by: | CommentsWe finished our “scheduled” schooling right about the end of April. In the weeks since we finished, I’ve been pretty laid back about having any kind of routine. I think it’s nice after having nine months of order to kick back and just do whatever, whenever.
The weather has been absolutely gorgeous. We sleep in…we play outside…we work in the garden…
But somehow, the lack of routine doesn’t set well with me after a few weeks. I don’t feel quite as productive. I don’t want the boys to get into a “what? you want me to actually do a chore?” mode. I don’t want the summer to go by and find that we didn’t really accomplish anything.
I need a schedule. I need some routine. I need productiveness. So, pardon me while I kind of think out loud here as I try to create some sort of organization for our summertime. It may not be pretty. Feel free to tune me out.
Projects I want to get done (with the boys help) this summer:
- Clean out the house and have a yard sale. (Guard your favorite action figures carefully…I’m in a “get rid of stuff” mood.)
- Clean up our storage room.
- Organize books in the school room.
- Paint the bathroom trim. (oh, I am so not looking forward to this one…)
- Paint our porch (?) (four boys with paint brushes? I don’t know)
- Teach Malachi to write his name. (more on this another time)
Projects I’m working on for Heavenly Homemakers:
- Gardening and Canning ebook (really, really want to have this one finished soon…I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen) :)
- Early Learners curriculum/ebook (really, really want to have this one finished soon…don’t think it’s going to happen) :(
- Oh so many more ebooks started and half finished
- Continue with Eat More Fruits and Veggies Challenge
- Catch up on emails and answering questions (does this ever really happen? That’s okay, bring on the emails!)
Stuff we need to work on every day:
- Keep up with the garden. (I won’t let the weeds get out of control…I won’t let the weeds get out of control..I won’t let the weeds…..)
- Keep up with the housework.
- Read the Bible and work on memory work.
Activities we can be involved in:
- Library summer reading program (definitely doing)
- Wessels Farm Life programs (local farm holding special classes for kids…teaching history…checking into)
- Science Museum summer classes (checking into)
- Wednesday dollar movie at the theater (every once in a while when there’s a good movie we want to see)
- Farmer’s Market (not selling baked goods this year…just selling shaved ice!)
Okay, here’s what I think we’ll do:
- Wake up whenever (hopefully I’ll wake up an hour or two before the boys so I can get computer work done) (actually, as it gets hotter, I’ll need to work in the garden during the earlier morning hours instead of working on the computer)
- Eat breakfast/read Bible together
- Do some daily chores before we start playing (we as in the boys part of we)
- Boys play/Mom does more housework…probably in the kitchen…or we all work in the garden together
- Lunch
- Work on projects mentioned above with boys
- Boys play/Mom works on HHM projects
- Mom exercises on mini-trampoline (gotta put that into the schedule because I won’t make myself do it otherwise)
- Dinner
- Straighten up the house
- Play or help Daddy with chores he needs help with/more garden work
- Bedtime (whenever that is)
Okay, well thank you for putting up with that. Even though it’s a loose schedule, I feel better now.
What do your summers look like? Do you try to keep a schedule?
The Great Closet Clean-out
Posted by: | CommentsThe boys have been begging. I finally said yes.
We finally pulled out all of our clothes and did the great switch from winter to summer clothes (leaving some sweats and jeans and sweatshirts in the closet just in case because packing all the warm clothes away is a sure way to make it snow).
Here’s what happens at our house:
I clean out and organize the boys’ closets twice a year. In the meantime…we receive boxes and bags of hand-me-downs. When this occurs…do I carefully sort and organize the clothing we receive?
Nope. I throw them into the back of a closet until unti the next biannual closet clean-out.
Why, you ask? Because I’m lazy like that. Because our clothing bins are in the attic making them hard to get to. Because we don’t need the clothes yet. Because I don’t want to. Because the clothes we receive are likely not to fit anyone yet anyway. And because organizing clothing twice a year for four growing boys is plenty for me.
This is what my camera captured when I turned on the flash then stuck
it into the back of the closet. That pile was several feet high.
We pulled it all out and it looked like this.
I asked Matt to bring our clothing containers down from the attic and the boys started pulling out all of their favorite shirts…and talking at once…and asking me loud questions like “will this shirt fit me this year?” and “oh can I have this one?”. Malachi was crawling all over me and into my well ordered piles and into the containers. It was a fun organizational moment. The kind that makes me want to not let them help me. But…I know they love helping me with this job, so I kept myself from screaming for Calgon to take me far, far away and let them go a little nuts for a while.
Two days and several hours later…the bottom of the closet is storing only sleeping bags. (Someone needs to take a broom to that floor.)
The clothing bins are now ready to go live in the attic again until the next time I feel like we need a little family insanity.
And…I was able to take a very full container of clothes to the clothing giveaway at church we hosted over the weekend.
What’s it like at your house when you sort through clothes during the changes of seasons? Have any closets that you need to clean out? (My boys would be happy to come and help you.)
You can go visit Tammy’s Recipes for more “Pile Clean Up” motivation.
It is a Fact That Plastic Drawers Bring Me Joy
Posted by: | CommentsIt doesn’t take much to make me squeal.
Just provide me with some rubbermaid totes with snap on lids and you’ll be my friend forever.
We recently acquired several new (to me) big rubbermaid totes…AND some of those cool plastic drawers. (It’s a long story of how we acquired them.)
The plastic totes are SO gonna help me get a handle on all the wonderful hand-me-downs we receive for the boys.
And the sets of plastic drawers? I gave those babies (and myself, by default) a good scrubbing, then Malachi and I headed into the school room with them.
Do you think we needed to?
Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe I should have told you to be sure you were sitting down before you looked at that. Scary isn’t it?
Want another view?
And you ask, “LAURA?! How could you possibly let your school room turn into such a disaster?!”
And I’d say, “Well, it was really quite simple.” ;)
We don’t really do our school work in the school room because it’s so much cozier to read history on the couches in the living room and to do math on the rug in front of the fireplace. Our school room has now just become a “hub” where we keep our books and stuff.
Therefore, after the boys are finished with a book or an activity, they go put it in the school room. And slowly but surely the idea of putting the book or activity in it’s place just didn’t hold any appeal to little boys who would rather go-play-with-legos-because-they-finally-got-all-their-work-done!!!! Plus, I’m pretty sure that room is full of hot lava.
My coping strategy was to simply close the door and walk away.
But seriously, I can hardly stand that much insanity in a room for so long before I begin to break out in a rash.
I finally sent the big boys in to put their books where they belonged. Then, Malachi and I used the new plastic drawers to organize his activities and fun pre-school stuff.
Here he is putting his little counting frogs into his “Counting Tools” drawer.
He’s counting them as he goes of course…
Ah, the joy of organized little plastic drawers. WITH labels on them. Doesn’t that just make you want to go get some beads out of drawer number four and string ‘em up in a pattern?
Now. We’re starting a new week of school work. Hot lava or not…I think we’ll try to do a better job of keeping the school room looking like this!
Does anyone else get a kick out of plastic storage containers as much as I do?
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One Room at a Time
Posted by: | CommentsI mentioned finding my living room again. Now I’m busy at work cleaning out and organizing every room because oh my goodness does my house ever need it.
What IS it about a new year that inspires so many of us to re-organize…re-group…re- re- realize that we have too much stuff hanging out of our drawers and THAT is why they won’t close?!
Here’s a room cleaning organizational tip that my sister-in-law Kari shared with me several years ago:
Start in one room. Stay in that room. If something belongs in another room…just throw it into that room and go back to the room you are working in to begin with.
Otherwise…you’ll start in the living room…notice a dirty plate…take the plate into the kitchen…see all the dirty dishes…start to wash them…stop to pick up some dirty socks on the kitchen floor…take the socks to the laundry room…start sorting the laundry…pick up a stuffed frog sitting on the dirty underwear…take the stuffed frog into the kid’s room to put into the toy box…notice your best scissors on your son’s dresser…take the scissors into the craft room…see the wrapping paper all over the floor…
And you’ll never get to the living room.
It’s called Organizational ADD. I have this disorder if I don’t follow the advice of my sister-in-law and work on ONE room until I finish it entirely.
This method works very well. And it is SO nice to at least have one room clean when you start to tackle the others.
Anybody else out there struggle with Organizational ADD? Anybody else out there cleaning out and re-organizing like CRAZY lately? Anybody else think that January should really come more often so we will be inspired to get organized more often? (ooh, except I don’t want it to be cold more often…)
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See what everyone else is sharing today at Rocks in my Dryer!
Schedule Schmedule: Answering Your Questions
Posted by: | CommentsI thought I’d take some time to answer some of your questions from this post.
What curriculum do I use for Language Arts?
We don’t use one single curriculum for our entire Language Arts program. For spelling, we use Spelling Power. For Phonics we use Explode the Code. For handwriting we are currently using Handwriting Without Tears, but for cursive we use Getty Dubay Italic Handwriting. (Asa doesn’t work out of a handwriting book anymore. His handwriting is better than mine now, and he just practices it when he does normal writing assignments or writes thank you notes, etc.) As for grammar, I decided to try my own thing this year and it is working pretty well. I’ll write a whole post about it sometime for you. (One in which you is welcome to check for grammatical errors.) :)
What do I do for exercise and when do I do it?
I LOVE to exercise…about as much as I LOVE to walk around a shopping mall for eight hours in high heels. (I don’t own any high heels.)
Exercise is not my favorite activity. I’d rather clean toilets. But, I know it’s good for me…so when I do discipline myself enough to exercise (and when my lungs are cooperating and allowing me to breathe like a normal person) my favorite way to exercise is on a rebounder (mini trampoline). We have one in our “game room” and I pull it down sometimes and “jog” on it after I’ve worked on the computer in the afternoons before I start dinner. Sometimes.
I enjoy taking brisk walks too, but I really, really like the rebounder. It hurts the least of all exercise I’ve ever done….and I like doing things that don’t hurt. I’m weird like that. (Or perhaps I’m just a wimp.)
Plus, I’ve heard that the rebounder is a very healthy way to make your body work well and get rid of toxins. You can read more about that here.
I wish I could tell you that I exercise on my rebounder regularly, but I don’t. Shame on me. Feel free to leave me a guilt trip in the comments section. Does it count that I move 100 miles an hour during the day and that while the boys were learning to sew I ran constantly from boy to boy re-threading their needles?
When do I clean?
Thankfully, I clean more regularly than I exercise. In fact, I usually work up a sweat while I clean, so I think we can call it exercise. Yes, let’s do that.
We try to reserve Friday mornings for cleaning. The boys are old enough now to really help and I’m so, so happy about that. We also try to do a “pick-up” of the house in the evenings, but seriously, by Friday morning the house looks pretty scary.
I’m trying to figure out a better routine…and some better discplines for the boys regarding putting their stuff away when they’re done playing with it. After Christmas, I’m going to try some new things to try to keep the house organized and clean for longer than a few short hours. If/when they work, I’ll let you know.
Okay…there you go…some answers to some of your questions. What do you do to get exercise and when do you clean? And seriously, don’t you think they are one in the same?
Schedule Schmedule: What Our Days Look Like
Posted by: | CommentsFirst let me share what our week looks like, then I’ll break down a school day for you. Of course, you know that we rarely follow this to the letter, right? (Because phones ring and skinned knees happens and math books get misplaced in places where they never should be placed if someone would have been really thinking when they placed it there.)
(Not written in the schedule is the fact that if I’m walking by the computer, I usually glance at it to see if I’ve received email. It’s an addiction. Sigh.)
(Also not written in the schedule is the fact that I pray almost constantly and spend time reading the Bible most days…usually in the evening. I didn’t put it into the schedule because there is not a consistent time I have set aside for reading.)
Here’s a basic week at our house:
Monday – Thursday - “normal” school days
Friday - P.E.; library; field trips; house cleaning
Saturday – planning for the upcoming week for school and meals; cooking and baking ahead; figuring out the blog plan for the week
Sunday – Church; sometimes company after church; small group fellowship in evening
Okay, now, here’s what our Monday through Thursday school days sort of, maybe, kinda look like:
- I get up anywhere between 6:30-7:30…check email, moderate comments, start breakfast. Oh yes, and sometimes I even take a shower (aren’t you glad?).
- Matt eats and leaves for work around 8.
- Boys get up and come down for hugs, mess around and waste time, get
hollered atgently reminded by me a few times to get the show on the road, then finally come eat breakfast. - I read Bible to the boys while they eat (I usually eat earlier with Matt or I eat on the fly).
- I clean up dishes and the breakfast table, the boys get dressed and ready for schoool, I throw in laundry.
- 9:30ish Boys bring down and set up an “activity” (usually something like legos or knex or magnetix) to work on in the living room while I read.
- I read history to the boys while they do their activity. This works SO much better than asking them to “be still and listen”. If all is going well…I also read from whatever “read-aloud” we’re on at the time. This is probably our favorite part of the day.
- Asa starts his math on the computer; Justus and Elias go to the table to work on math, handwriting, spelling, phonics, other language arts (On Mondays, the boys also write in their journals about the weekend); Malachi does “school work” at the table too, or just plays until it is 11:00 and time for Caillou, then he goes to watch that. After Justus and Elias have finished their book work (usually takes about 45 minutes), they go play with Malachi.
- After Asa finishes his math (which takes usually around 30-45 mintues depending on how focused he is) he does spelling with me and language arts, then goes to play. I work on lunch.
- Lunch time is usually around 12:30, depending on when Matt gets home. We work on memory verses around the table and sometimes I read more from our read-aloud book.
- After lunch, we do our science lesson and experiment if there is one. We also work on any writing assignments at this time. (Last week the boys wrote Haiku poetry. Even Malachi learned what a syllable was!)
- At 2:00, the boys have reading time. They usually all sit in the living room reading, while I go upstairs and read to Malachi. Malachi LOVES this since I’m usually giving so much of my attention to the other boys in the morning. I tuck Malachi in for a nap after I read to him (most days).
- 2:30, the boys go watch Fetch with Ruff Ruffman and Cyber Chase while Malachi naps. After their shows are over, they play (somewhat) quietly. I hit the computer and work as hard as I can during this time.
- 5:00 The boys have computer time and play (usually) educational games. I work on dinner.
- We pick up the house and eat around 6:30.
- Each evening is different, but now that soccer is over, we’ve been able to spend time playing games together, which all six of us LOVE! Yahtzee anyone?
- Start getting boys ready for bed around 8 or 8:30. We have prayer time together either in one of the boys rooms or in the living room.
- Matt and I
play rock, paper, scissors to see who gets the computer:) take turns working on the computer (he on writing out price quotes and bills for his construction work, etc…me answering emails and working on website stuff) and try to get to bed around 11. We are reading a book called Spiritual Disciplines for a Godly Life by Donald Whitney. We try to read it together before falling asleep. Usually Matt gets through about a page and a half before he says, “Are you falling asleep or should I keep reading?”
So there you have it. Did that answer any of your questions, or just give you more??!
