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!

Being a first time home educator and reading a long thread at the beginning of the fall on ways other families schedule made me

1. a little nervous that I was being overly optimistic about being flexible
   and
2. 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?