One month into our new homeschool year, we have gotten into a good routine, figured out where our schedule needs tweaking, and are ready to add on some of the extras that make our school year complete. Read along as we take stock of our first month, #notbacktoschool.
Routine
It is good to be back into a routine around our house. During the month we took off for summer break we had a lot of down time to recharge, but being out of routine also means more problem tend to crop up. As a result a month off at a time is about the max that I want to take time off of school.
It was a well needed break after a pretty tightly scheduled, and a packed schedule at that, from April through June. We all were able to unwind, take some time to sleep in, spend alot of the time being lazy in the pool. It was also an opportunity for all of us to spend more time on activities that interest us, things that get less time, during the school year. I pulled out some crochet for the first time in two and a half years. Britt of course spent most of his waking hours on the Nintendo Switch. Ruth talked a lot online with her cousins and pursued some of her artistic activities. Rebecca and Kate mostly caught up on their favorite YouTubers.
However, the lack of routine also leads to problems. Lazy days seep into laziness in taking care of chores, unlimited electrics tends toward testy attitudes with one another, and of course eventually everyone was "bored" and complaining. These are areas that we struggle with less during the school year. Chores are scheduled into our day, and while no one likes them they do them when expected. Since electrics and free time are more limited there is less opportunity for bad attitudes and general boredom.
Our daily routine, consists of getting up around 8 and accomplishing morning chores and breakfast. We do our Bible reading first at 9, while people finish up breakfast, before moving on to DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time for the three oldest at 9:30. During that thirty minutes, I practice phonics with Kate and read a book aloud with her. Next at 10, we start history. I usually spend about an hour on the subject with them. Britt and Ruth move on to their science at 11. I get their video lesson set up on the computer, and after watching that they either together do an experiment or one does their reading and make notes from the text book answering the days questions, while the other does their history reading. Rebecca and Kate have time to finish cleaning up from history before I do their science reading and activities with them at 11:30. At noon we break for lunch, and I do read aloud while they prepare lunch and eat. At 1 pm we have independent work. This is when Britt and Ruth switch books so that the other can do their science while the first does their history reading. This is also time for Britt to work on his online Driver's Ed course. Kate works on her handwriting practice then. This is also time for any writing assignment work or to finish up any unfinish work from earlier subjects. At 2 pm we take an hour for math. At that point in the day they have afternoon chores and then are finished, unless they haven't finished their work from earlier in the day. At that point it is up to them to use their free time to complete their work.
Tweaking
Now that we have our first month down, and our routine is pretty well set, after all as of today we'll have logged our first twenty-two days. It is easy to tell where the original schedule needed a little tweaking. First of all, I wasn't allowing enough time for history before swapping to science. I started out the year only give us thirty to forty minutes for science, and I really need the full hour. I also, have noted that most days Britt and Ruth need at least till 3:30 to cover all of their school work. Also, since Rebecca's online lit class hasn't begun yet, she doesn't usually need the time for independent work in the afternoon, and so I've let her do math earlier in the day.
As good as a schedule may be, I find it always needs a little tweaking after living with it for a few weeks. The first week, is a little tricky to get through and stay on schedule. Then there are always a few days in there where you need to move things around. In our case we've had a couple of doctors appointments that derail parts of the day, and another time that we bumped our Adventure Friday to Tuesday which necessitated bumping the rest of the week's plans around. However, this year has required very little adjustment to the schedule. We are finding that three solid days of work, followed by a lighter day and a library trip, before our Adventure Friday, makes for a perfect week. We capitalize on those first three days being very focused, and then as it drops off during the week, we have more active days.
Add-ons
This month will require a little further adjustment as we are adding back in our extra activities that round out our school year: co-op and online classes. We have co-op once a month, with several other homeschooling families from Church. This year as we are learning about Florida Flora and Fauna we will be outdoor schooling. The kids are more excited about this opportunity than any other co-op year. We will meet once a month at a State Park for this class. We plan to bring a picnic lunch most meetings, and then do some trail and geocaching where we can. Those Mondays we won't plan any other school work, so it just changes up our weekly schedule a little bit.
Our other big add-on, will be our classes with Open Tent Academy. We cannot say enough good things about this group. The kids don't always love the work involved in the classes, but they always feel like they have accomplished so much by the end of the class. And we all love Mrs. Eva and Mr. Jonathan who started Open Tent Academy and teach several classes. These classes are taught at a specific time each week or every other week (depending on the type of class), and so they will require us to adjust our daily schedules a little bit. Sometimes we will drop what we would have been doing during that time block, other subjects, we might have to move to our time block for independent work. But, I'm hoping that we can mostly keep our schedule intact since it is working so well for us.
In Conclusion
Ultimately while homeschooling is about flexibility, I've found for us that a healthy schedule does wonders for our family. While I often hate the rut that it feels like we get into, it does wonders for my ADHD kids. Having a schedule means that there is a set time for each subject and then they get to move on to something else. It also means that we get a chance to cover material in every area that we want to on a given day, even if we don't get quite as far as we intended. Also, having that predictability seems to do wonders for everyone's attitude, because they known what to expect.
This year is off to a great start with our schedule worked out and our routines firmly established. We are excited to add in our extra classes and anticipate being able to tweak and change up things as we go to get the best of both worlds: flexibility and routine.
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