Getting Started

This week has been our official week of homeschool. We did a few things the last few weeks but they were more hit and miss as we were gone for a week for one last trip to visit our families in Star Valley. It then took a couple days to get settled back in, get the house caught back up and get my curriculum ready that we changed at last minute.  So officially we started this week.  How has it gone?

Monday:  It took us a bit to get the kids going and they were willing to get started and we got quite a bit done. But by the time we finished up at 3:00, we were all exhausted.  I could not have every school day go like that. There are still lots of other things that I needed to do, prep time that was needed, down time, and some play time for all.  We had to change something.

So I picked up a book that another homeschooling friend of mine recommended.  Love to Learn by Diane Hopkins. It's full of tips, advice and suggestions from a long term homeschooling mother.  In the little bit that I read that evening I made some changes to the structure of our day, my priorities and the next couple of days have gone awesome.  We have now completed all of our daily schooling by noon!  Leaving the afternoon for errands, playing, jobs, chores, music lessons, design work or lesson planning for upcoming days.  Oh I hope I can continue this for the rest of the year. It has been awesome.  Here are a few of the changes that I made.

I am up by somewhere between 5-5:30 am.

I spend the morning reading my scriptures, doing any other preparation needed for the school day. I shower or try to have breakfast ready by 6:30, so we can get everyone up, eat and have morning scripture study with Beau before he leaves to be to work by 7:00.  I am hoping to get a 1/2 hour of exercise in there somewhere too.

If I get on the computer I don't check email or browse the web. I only do what is necessary to prep for school. I don't let myself check any of this until we've finished school in the afternoon.

I have everyone get ready for the day - dressed, hair fixed, teeth brushed.  The first one to be ready for the day get's first pick of the chores for the morning.  (This morning was the first morning I tried this technique.  What has been taking them anywhere from 30 minutes or longer to do, took them exactly 3-5 minutes. They wanted first choice on chores.  It was amazing.  They didn't know what their chores would be, and they knew if they were the last one they would probably get stuck with the worse. I think we'll continue this method  for getting ready.

They also were more willing to do the chores because they chose what it was rather than me telling, and it was something different every day based on what I needed done.  We had been having arguments over zones lately because someone's didn't get messy and it wasn't fair that they didn't have to clean when another one was super messy. Plus there have been items that needed to be done that weren't getting done because they weren't on the regular chore schedule. I decided I would write the chore list based on what needed done instead of a set one.

While they are working on chores, I do dishes, throw in some laundry, pick up any major areas, and if needed also shower and get ready.  Depending on the amount of family work I have that needs to be done in the morning we'll start school either at 8:00 or 9:00am.

I then pull the kids together to start school. We start with a quick devotional where we start with prayer, learn about a virtue for the week.  This week is kindness (since it has really been lacking in our home lately.) We learn a new song. This weeks was "Kindness Begins With Me." We practice our memorization of the Living Christ and either play a quick game or read a story about the virtue.

We then start do our Family School Curriculum with our subject for the day.  This is done with everyone together.... hence the name "Family School" :)  I am really excited about this curriculum and will share more about it in a later post.  This usually takes us 1 1/2 - 2 hours to do the lesson for the day.  I was waiting to do this after the kids did all their individual work and we weren't getting to it clear until the afternoon and we were all getting restless at this point.  After reading Diane's suggestions I decided to do it first.

After we do the subject for the day, we then do individual assignments, which I had been doing all together at the table so I could help everyone.  It was taking forever.  I decided to take Diane's advice to have them learn on their own away from distractions. Meaning away from each other!

I created a weekly assignment log that has what they need to do every day for their individual lessons.  They include:

copywork / spelling
write in their journal
their specific writing assignment for the subject of the day
reading for 20 minutes
the math lesson for the day

Then rotating day by day it will have music lesson, tech lesson, or Spanish for the day. They were given the instructions that they are not allowed to have free time or play until all of their boxes have been checked off.  They can do them in any order. They need to do it in a room completely by themselves. If they procrastinate it and never finish it for the day, not only did they loose play time or free time, they will find all of the same assignments given to them the next day completely blank so they can start all over. (My friend suggested this method, that after a few days it works wonders at stopping the procrastination and distractions.)  I will go around to help them with any problems they have or questions. They can skip the ones they don't know or need help with.

It was amazing how fast the older ones were able to get their work done. I was able to spend part of that time working one on one with Isaac on his reading lessons. It also works well because Belén usually takes a pretty long nap in the mornings.

We have been done by noon the last two days with this schedule.  We were able to have the afternoon to run errands and go to piano lessons. Today I was tired and could take a nap without feeling guilty, get caught up on some laundry, dry some food and do some reading that I was wanting to catch up on. I'm hoping to also use the afternoon for a chance to get out in some sunshine and do something physical with the kids.

I had a friend that is starting her first year homeschooling ask me how my day was set up and our schedule.  I don't know that we had a major schedule in the past which did make it difficult sometimes to get through everything, or everything just took a lot longer than it needed to.  So right now this is my new schedule and new plan and it seems to be working.  There will be times when we have more detailed assignments where school might go until 1:00. There will be other times when an individual subject might get dropped so we can fit something else in together, or because a lesson will take more time. But it seems like those will be easier to work with and deal with than having the whole day mixed up.

I'll keep you updated on how this works the rest of the year. I know there will be days that just don't work out like this, but even if most of the time it was working we seem to be getting a lot more done in shorter amounts of time.