Tackling Scheduling

If you read this post, you know scheduling and I had this love/hate relationship last school year.

With 3 new kids joining the schooling clan this year, I knew scheduling was going to have to become my new best friend.  I recently finished a 3-day practicum for CC.  It was brutal on our schedule but the training material was unbeatable for the price…free! (Kids camps were a reasonable $35/child for the 3 days.)  I was motivated and had some kid-free time to tackle what next year’s schedule will look like.

CC’s founder, Leigh Bortins, has a great suggested hour block schedule for homeschooling multiple kids.  I liked it in theory last year but it didn’t fit our squeeze-schooling-into-the-white-areas style.  Next year, I’m determined to make it work for us (even if there’s a bit of a learning curve at first).

The idea is that you break an hour down into 10 minute increments.  You work with each child for about 10 minutes starting with 20 minutes for the little guys and working your way up.  Each older child has assigned work to do while waiting for mom.  They are trained to mark and hold questions until designated “mom-time” rolls around but keep working.  I think the model makes more sense visually, so here it is.

My guess is Mia will struggle the most since she’s still an emerging reader of sorts.  The plan is that if a child finishes or gets stuck beyond moving on before “mom-time,” he or she will pick up a book and read and wait quietly and patiently or review CC Memory Work.  If you have more than four children, you just have to split them up into 4 groups that make the most sense by curriculum or development.  Our Bigs may end up mirroring PJ or Mia’s schedule for some hours depending on what we’re working on.

I chose to kind of theme each hour block with either math, grammar/memory work, history, science, or writing/spelling.  It just helped me make sure we were fitting everything in. 

Next I built 2 to 4 hour blocks into our daily schedule.  And compiled the days into a weekly schedule.

Click here to see a week at a glance.

I want to start each day with prayer and Bible reading.  I’m not going to do a formal devotion, just let them steep in it. 

Click here to see the week for each child.

I have this in an Excel document.  I’ll copy it into a sheet for each week and write specific assignments in for each child. 

If you think this might work for your family, you can get to a Google Docs copy here for your use.

If you have a great system, I’d love to hear about it.  There’s still lots of time to tweak mine before September!

Happy Scheduling!