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Highland Dove Homeschool |
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Schedule
I hesitate to show you this. First of all, it's a big lie. I almost NEVER even TRY to use my schedule. Second of all, when I try, I fail. So, this is nothing I even try to live up to. But, I write a schedule each year to see if I'm asking too much of any one kid. When we declare Martial Law (the kids have been so awful that we take everything
away and insist on military discipline) about twice a year for about two weeks.
(It takes about a week of Martial Law for the kids to conform to our
expectations of behavior after they've been so terrible - then another week to
earn back our trust that they are willing to joyfully obey, so we can trust them
with normal life, again.) The schedule works during Martial Law.
Under normal life conditions, it just hangs on the wall. I go more into
depth about Martial Law on the Child Training
page.
I used to buy Pflaum Student Planners (about $5/kid), now we're using Good News Studen Planners for the kids and fill out their daily schedule once a month. Then I let the kids decide what to do when until I declare "OK, let's all do history." We don't get as much accomplished, but it's an easier pace for me & the kids. It works like this: 7:00 am-ish up (well, they wake up and play & climb in my bed at 7:00 and
cuddle with me until I'm up) 8:00 am-ish Start school. I work with the youngest kid first while the older ones start on something they can do without me. 9:00 am-ish I do Latin with the girls for 20 minutes, while the boys do some phonics worksheets. The boys are basically done for the day, except a few subjects they do with their sisters in the afternoon - they enjoy their afternoon "school", so it's not drudgery on anyone (well, a little taxing on me to deal with little kids...but they do learn!).
Once I discover them playing around, I ask for a report of what they've
gotten done & assign them a "priority task" like math and tell
them to bring it to me when they're finished, along with their planner. 1:00 pm-ish I'll continue assigning whatever subject is not done until I'm satisfied they've done a good days work or until I declare "It's time for..." something we all do together - history, religion, science, art. I also give them lots of carrots - if you get all of your work done by ...2pm, you can ... put up the baby pool and swim with your brothers - or something like that to motivate them. DD 11 (who isn't self-motivated & chooses to leisure her hours away) isn't usually done with school until 5pm (the cut-off of "You're dad's coming home and if you're not done...") DD 9 (who has about the same amount of work on her own level, but is VERY self-motivated) is usually done with school by 11am - except for the subjects she has to wait for me so we can all do together. DS 7 takes about an hour not including reading to me, & me reading to him - another 30 minutes for that whenever I fit it in, usually when DS 4 gets tired & cranky in the afternoon & quits playing nicely. DS 6 also does some subjects with his sisters (art, religion projects, history, science projects). DS 5 just plays and distracts his siblings, although he's reading & doing
math just ahead of DS6's level - see our Preschool
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