School Planning for Fall

This month at our local homeschool meeting we are going to be talking about schedules. There are some great schedule helps at Simply Charlotte Mason and a new online planner that looks great.

I'm going to post my proposed schedule for next year here mainly because I know some of the ladies read this blog and it will be nice to have this in a central place. I have 5 students this year, ages 17, 15, 13, 11 and 6. This schedule does not include my 17yo as she will be on her own schedule. My 6yo's routine will fit in with this one but not follow this exactly -more on that below. So this schedule is mainly for my three students, ages 15, 13 and 11. This is the basic format of what we have done for years. Sometimes I mix it up a bit because I just like change. I've been working hard on getting everything planned out so that afternoons are free for work or personal pursuits and this year we are going to try to be finished by 1:00. I give approximate times of each block and our planned starting time is 7:30am. Sometimes life happens and everything doesn't go according to plan but this is what we aim for. I am somewhat flexible but I guard this time and try to be purposeful about what I let take its place.

1 hr. - Bible (alternate doing this together & alone) and then Read Alouds during breakfast - poetry plus historical fiction or classics Monday thru Thursday, composer biography on Friday.

30m. - Math

30m - 45m. - Reading time #1 - History M, W, Fr and Science on Tu, Th

30m - Break - boys and Annalise exercise, Hope takes 15 m. of this time to practice singing

45m - Together Time - 1 activity for each weekday - US Geography with map questions, picture study & art, nature lore, science project, missionary stories

45m - Writing (various work - grammar, dictation, copywork, narrations, freewrites, other assignments)

45m - Reading #2 - Literature M, W, Fr and Geography Tu, Th

45m - Various:

M - Latin with boys / Hope gone to dance

Tu- Apologia Science with boys / Hope Science notebook page

W - Nature Study

Th - Latin with boys/ Hope gone to dance

Fr - History timelines and illustrations

The Reading times will mostly be times when each student reads their own books. In addition to this schedule some afternoons we will have a Poetry and Shakespeare Tea. We will play the term's composer throughout the day. I will try to encourage more handiwork this year. Music lessons will happen in the afternoon for at least Abel and Hope this coming year. Also sometimes the boys talk me into reading to them before they go to bed, usually just fun books.

Annalise will mostly do math and writing when everyone else does. One of the reading times she will read to herself and the other reading time I will read something aloud to her - mainly selections from Ambleside Online's first year booklist that we haven't read yet. She won't spend the whole alloted time on these things though, more like 20 minutes for each subject. She will participate in our weekly nature study, picture study and composer studies.

I tallied up how many times a week will do each subject and it looks like this:

Math - 5x

Writing - 5x

History - 4x plus historical fiction 4x a week - total of 8x

Science - 6x

Geography - 4x (includes missionary stories)

Composer - 1x plus music playing throughout the week

Art: Picture Study- 1x

Art: hands on- 1x

Foreign Language - 2x

I think that's pretty good considering we should be done by 1:00.