I knew when we decided to home school, I wanted to be flexible enough to accomodate social activities, service opportunities, traveling, spur-of-the-moment field trips, and whatever else popped up. Because we were transitioning from a school environment and our kids are extroverts, we erred on the side of over scheduled when it came to committing to things that would get the kids out of the house and in a variety of classroom and social situations. Add those things to Ty’s speech and preschool, and it was clear that we were not going to be a 9am to 12pm type family when it came to school. In fact, no two days during our week would even resemble each other.
Being a first time home educator and reading a long thread at the beginning of the fall on ways other families schedule made me
- a little nervous that I was being overly optimistic about being flexible
and - realize that I was going to have to think outside of the box since no one published a tool that allowed me to schedule a flexible schedule.
I fumbled around for the first couple weeks of school to find something that worked for our family (who was someone writing our own curriculum and who wasn’t planning on scheduling the traditional way).
I still brainstorm and plan a lot of content on OneNote but have combined my notes for subjects that the kids share content on such as history, science, art, health, and music. For scheduling, I’m using Google’s Calendar. I like it because it’s free, allows me to color code, and is easily adjusted. Additionally I can pair it with a task list for each child and overlay it with a personal calendar. As a visual gal, I love that I get a picture of the entire week that allows me to adjust when necessary with a quick drag of the mouse.
On Sunday evening, I sit down and see where the white spaces are in our schedule and plop in 30 or 60 minute blocks of school. I color code our core subjects to I can see that we’re getting everything in. As the week goes on, I can move things around as we have extra time or things pop up or just go slower than planned.
I try to plan things that aren’t interactive or need more help from me when Ty is in school or napping and things that are independent for the morning when I’m still running around getting the day set up or working. Sometimes we do school as late as 7PM at night if Patrick’s not around and we’ve spent the day taking advantage of the fact we’re in charge of our schedule (aka, playing at the playground if it’s 70 degrees in October). Because a lot of our school is listening or kid-chosen, content-appropriate activities, we can do it the car driving around or in the evening.
How do you keep your schedule flexible? Or do you?