I’ll tell you about how our school days and planning have been in the past, but it is subject to change. I’m not sure how I’m going to homeschool 3 children at once (since Gabriela will be more involved this year), but it will happen somehow. They’re too far apart in age to do any subjects together, although I know some people do that. Maybe it would have worked if I had started homeschooling them all at the same time, but I started with the oldest, and by the time the next one was ready for school, there was not much they could do together. So, I’ll be doing 3 separate grade levels in every subject.
Planning
As far as planning goes, I usually plan the whole year in advance on some subjects. When it comes to Reading, Science, and Social Studies, I want to make sure I get it all done in a year, so I plan out the year. Other subjects, such as Language, Spelling, and Math, we just work on some each day and go at our own pace.
In Kindergarten and 1st grade, I did it the easy way. I ordered the Heart of Dakota curriculum, and everything was laid out for me with clear instructions, so I didn’t have to do any planning. I love HOD, and maybe I could have made it easier on myself by sticking with them, but I kept finding other programs I wanted to try, so here I am planning again. I even write my own curriculum guides for a few subjects.
We don’t start school until the beginning of September, so I still have time to plan for this year. I like to get it all done before school starts because I find it less stressful during the school year if it’s already there. That’s just me.
Our School Day
Okay, now I’ll tell you the #1 lifesaver for us when it comes to planning and having an organized school day: Sue Patrick’s workbox system! I highly recommend it. And yes, I tweaked it to fit our needs, and yes, I keep tweaking the system as we go. We started out with 12 boxes per child (that’s 2 children), but I don’t have room to add another 12 for Gabriela. So, now each of my three kids have 8 boxes. People do this differently. Some have shoe racks and plastic shoeboxes as suggested in the program. Others used tubs with drawers, file folders, and pocket charts. I couldn’t find anything I liked in England, so I ended up with a piece of furniture from IKEA. Here’s a photo of our workbox station:
Our school day goes this way. I don’t have a set schedule. The kids start with box #1 and keep going until they finish box #8. Occasionally, I let them do the boxes in whatever order they want…just to change it up a bit from the norm. I usually have them start with Bible, Math, and Reading at the beginning of the day. Also, I try to set it up so that I can work with Moriah or Gabriela while Isaac is doing work he can do on his own. I do give them breaks after they complete so many boxes, although I’m considering doing scheduled time breaks. Some subjects are done only once or twice a week, so I change what’s in some boxes. At the end of each day, I simply fill their boxes with everything they need for the next day.
I use the weekends to make any copies they need for the week, and I store these in a pocket chart according to the day of week they’ll need them. That makes it easier throughout the week. All I have to do is pull their papers for that day and place them in the appropriate boxes.
At this time, I don’t have any set exercises to start the morning off—no calendar time, although I do have a calendar. I’ll probably try to do some of that with Gabriela this year. My plan this year is possibly to start the day with family exercise, and the kids usually have their own devotional/prayer time before school. I guess we’ll see how it goes!
I’m linking this post to “Back to (Home) School” at Classic Housewife (and yes, I’m very late with this post, but we were busy packing to return to the UK).
