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Basic Homeschooling Information |
Getting it All Done “If
you fail to plan, plan to fail.” Children don’t become
educated simply because you have a good curriculum on the shelf. You still need to figure out when to teach them,
how to get the baby down for naptime, what to serve for dinner, when to take
everyone to the park, and how the dirty clothes are going to get sorted,
washed, dried, folded, and put back into dresser drawers. It
can be frustrating to never get
everything done. What helped my family
is when a friend loaned me the book, Managers
of Their Homes. I did not agree
with the author’s recommendations about babies, but was nonetheless able to
glean some good tips. The author
recommends making a list of everything that you are trying to accomplish in a
day, and estimate the amount of time needed for every item on your list. Don’t forget things like sleeping and
eating! When I did this, I discovered
that I was trying to cram 36 hours into a 24-hour day. No wonder I wasn’t
getting everything done! You have different steps in planning if you want to find a way to get everything done. Skip to reading step three, if you already have a good handle on steps one and two. 1) Set your goals and select curriculum 3) Organize your days and weeks so that you can get everything done I. Set Goals & Select Corresponding CurriculumGoal-setting
and curriculum discussion have already been discussed, so I will not repeat
that information here. read goals &
curriculum planning discussion II. Schedule Your School YearNow
that you know which subjects your children will study and the curriculum they
will use, take an overall look at your year.
It is not necessary to teach every subject every day. In the public school arena, students work
on a system of quarters, semesters, or trimesters. Customize that system. Arrange your school year to best meet the
needs of your family and your unique commitments. It is easier to think about working hard at
a subject for one term instead of a
whole year. Here
is one option. Math and science all
year, language arts and occupational education first semester, social
studies/history, plus health/art/music second semester:
After you have determined whether you will work on a full-year schedule or divide the year into quarters, semesters or trimesters, you still have more options. Maybe you want to study every subject every day, but that is not the only approach. In college (and now, many high schools), some classes meet on MWF, others on T/Th. I
know one family that does schoolwork for five weeks, then the kids get a
one-week vacation while mom schedules the next five weeks. You have a multitude of options. In our family, we try to do all schoolwork
in the morning, leaving afternoons available for special projects. You have the freedom to create whatever
plan will work best for your family’s schedule. Here
is one option that varies depending on the day of the week:
What
this example means (we actually used this schedule one year) is that kids
were doing math, language, and reading every day Monday through
Thursday. MWF were also spelling,
social studies/history, science, and one elective (M: art; W: occ ed; F:
music). On Tuesdays and Thursdays,
after reading, kids did a writing assignment then went to the YMCA for
homeschool PE, swimming lessons, and gymnastics classes. III. Organize Your Days and WeeksIf you are reading about how to get it all done,
you’ve probably already done the above scheduling. What next? Relax and enjoy your days with your kids. Plan schoolwork, yes, but plan the housework,
too, otherwise something won’t get done and everyone will get frustrated. First make a list of the things scheduled by
outsiders. For instance, when does
garbage collection occur? You have to
work around their schedule; they won’t work around yours. Know your obligations and plan for them. Your list might include such things as
garbage, recycle, scouts, church, 4H… Next consider other commitments that you can
schedule at your convenience: grocery
shopping, cutting toddlers’ fingernails, feeding pets… How frequently you want/need to do
housework? Do you clean your bathroom
once a week? Daily? How often do you wash laundry ( For some people, it is enough to post a list on
the refrigerator. Look at the list and
make sure all the jobs get done.
However, if you’re one of those people trying to cram 36 hours into
24, an overwhelming list won’t be enough. The more you try to do, and the more people you
are teaching, the more detailed your schedule needs to be if you want to
ensure that everything gets done. I
used a simple routine when my kids were very young. As they got older and
there was more to juggle, we used a very detailed schedule. Now they are older yet, and can take
responsibility for much of their own work, so a detailed schedule is no
longer necessary. To make a schedule, I list everything that needs to get done by each person and determine
how much time to allow for every task.
In addition to eating/dressing/brushing teach, things that you might want to consider: Bible study, sleeping, making beds, music
practice, cleaning bathrooms, washing fingerprints off light switches,
cleaning kitchen, cleaning bedrooms, dusting, vacuuming, mopping floors,
washing windows and mirrors, caring for animals, folding & putting away
clean clothes, helping wash/dry laundry, planning meals, assisting with meal
prep, taking out trash, sweeping the ceiling for cobwebs, washing the top of
the refrigerator, one-on-one time with parents and siblings, free time,
special projects, mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, raking leaves,
attending club meetings, community service, and schoolwork. If you are responsible for a ministry at
your church and find that the phone rings off the hook on Saturday nights or
Wednesday afternoons, you might as well plan to be available to field those
calls; instead of considering them interruptions or aggravations (or taking
your phone off the hook), consider them a routine part of your ministry and
allow time for them. There are a limited number of hours in a
day. If any person’s tasks take more
time than is available, choices will have to be made. Look at the list of things to be done: ·
is the task necessary? ·
can it be delegated to someone else? ·
can it be done weekly instead of daily? Pare every person’s list until it can be
accomplished within a single day. Next
I cut slips of paper and write all the tasks needed for every person: 1” per 20-minutes. That means that if a task takes 30 minutes,
it’s written on a 1½” slip of paper; if it takes 40 minutes, it’s on a 2”
slip of paper; and if it takes a full hour, it’s on a 3” slip of paper. I also color-code things, so that I can
tell by the color who the slip of paper is for. Juggling all those slips of paper around is the
next step. The more people you have,
the more challenging it is to schedule everything with no conflicts. Unless you have two pianos and a
sound-proof room, only one person can do piano practice at a time. If kids are sharing a book or software,
they have to take turns studying that subject. If the whole family is studying a subject
together, they have to all be
together for the study. If mom is
giving one child a spelling test at 9:30, she can’t be helping another child
with a science experiment. To make your juggling project easier, draw a grid
on a piece of poster-board– one column to write times in, and one column per
person. Rows should be three inches
tall to fit the task-slips previously mentioned. Covered this with contact
paper. After I block out times for sleeping and eating,
it works best for us if I call one child and have him help me arrange his
schedule. We put a little piece of
double-backed tape on the back of the task-slips so that they don’t shift out
of position. Contact paper on the posterboard makes it possible to easily
reposition the task slips and re-use the board year-after-year. Emphasizing that we have just created a draft that is subject to revision, I
call the second child and we arrange that person’s schedule around what has
already been planned for the first child.
Then the third child gets a turn, and so on until we appear to have a
workable schedule. We then try the
draft schedule for two days. If
modifications are needed, we make them and try again. Once a schedule works for two weeks, we
know we have a good schedule. With a good schedule posted on the wall (everyone
can look at the clock and the schedule, and know what they’re supposed to be
doing), I also like to have a list of special projects that I’m trying to
accomplish. I find myself tackling
those projects during my free-time, and feeling like I am accomplishing much
more than in the past. Click here for some
sample routines and schedules
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