The Schedule

Feel free to laugh along with me.

Way back in May, I posted our general plans for this coming school year. I’ve been procrastinating and avoiding school planning since then. We are only a week away from the start of our community’s Classical Conversations Challenge program, so I figured I couldn’t avoid it any longer.

I truly am having a difficult time wrapping my brain around what our days might look like. All four of my children need almost constant help or supervision (hello, distractible, writing-averse, verbal-processor children), and they are all doing different work this year. We had an extremely relaxed year last year (and months and months of “summer”), so this is going to be a bit of a shock to our systems.

Levi is in Challenge 1 (9th grade). Luke is in Challenge A (7th grade). Leif is in Foundations and Essentials (5th grade). Lola is in early Foundations (K). They will be doing very little of the same work, and they can’t be in the same room together or they are completely distracted. But they need my help and supervision at all times. Hahahaha!!!

I’ve used Luke’s Challenge A work as the primary unifying schedule and worked the others in and around him. I’ve bolded my priorities for teaching and assisting.

I really have no idea how much time these subjects and skills will take, and I’m sure there will be a great deal of adjusting. But if I don’t make a schedule, our days will be chaos, we won’t get started in a timely manner, boys will need my help when I cannot give it, and lessons will not happen.

Challenge begins two weeks before Foundations and Essentials, so that will give us extra time to figure out what sort of schedule will work for all the kids. We are also on break from swim team for a few more weeks, so that will help as well. (Levi has a broken foot, so that may make the “break” a little longer. He’s hoping to swim for the local high school, and I don’t know what their swim schedule will be.)

I’m not sure where piano lessons will fit into this mix. They haven’t been scheduled. And Levi and his friend McKinnon may be working together two days a week for certain subjects (one day with his mom, Char, and one day with me), so that will mix things up even more.

And I really have no idea where Lola fits into this day (other than distracting her brothers and disaster-izing the house and interrupting me—all day long). I’m not too worried about her academics.

[Our community day is Monday, so this is the general outline for the rest of the week.]

Tuesday- Friday School Schedule

6:00  Wake up/shower/quiet time

6:45  Wake up boys/put on music/make tea

7:00  Morning chores (everyone)

7:30  Breakfast/clean-up (everyone)

8:00  Symposium (everyone together)

Outside! (exercise on porch or walk down driveway, observe weather)
Prayer (loop schedule)
Song/hymn (loop schedule)
Bible reading
Memory work (loop schedule: poetry, speech, Bible)
Beauty (loop schedule: art, music, MCT poetry)
MCT Vocabulary

9:00  Latin [F/E: Independent work]

[10 minute exercise break]

10:00  Math (+snack)

[5 minute exercise break]

11:00  Science [F/E: Veritas history online, assigned reading]

12:00  Lunch

12:30  Geography [Ch 1: Debate/American Documents]

1:30  Lost Tools of Writing [Ch 1: Debate/Drama/Music Theory; F/E: Independent work]

2:15  Rhetoric (reading and note-taking, memory work) [Ch 1: Lost Tools of Writing]

3:00  Piano Practice [F/E: IEW (writing)]

[snack]

3:45  Swim Practice

[Me: exercise, errands, lesson planning, pre-reading, meal prep, house cleaning]

6:15  Dinner

Evening: Whatever didn’t get done during the day

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F/E Independent Work: IEW Fix It, Essentials grammar chart copy work, Foundations memory work review, piano practice, Song School Latin, typing practice, Duo Lingo Spanish, Veritas self-paced history, Sheppard Software geography games, map tracing, presentation preparation (might need some help with that one), assigned reading in all subjects, Khan Academy math. I need to squeeze in spelling somewhere, but that is not independent.

F/E assigned reading and some of our Symposium work will come from this list and especially this one.

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Now I need to set up work stations for each of the boys with easy access to all of their books and materials.