Saturday, October 06, 2007

Scheduling

For the past two weeks, we have been following a school schedule relatively successfully. In the past, I have let other things overrun our school time, but this year, I am trying to conscientiously make school time a priority in our lives. Hence the schedule I made for us and we've been following.

I started with the daily time form from Donna Young and then edited it for our life. I made it into six columns. The first is the time of day in half hour increments, the next five columns are all headed with one child's name. I have five of these sheets, one for each of our school days, Tuesday - Saturday. In the past, some days have been able to be repeats, but this year due to piano lessons, the oldest violin's lesson and swim club practice, each day is just a bit different.

While on vacation a couple of weeks ago, my friend brought along her book, Managers of Their Homes by the Maxwell's. I perused it and took the idea of having siblings working together at different parts of the day. I also used the idea of having the younger ones play with certain things at certain times. Both of these have worked very well for the past two weeks.

But there is a problem (isn't there always!). *I* don't have as much time to sit and read blogs, or post or catch up on Looper mail. And there were times this week, that brought me to depression. I need to come up with time to do that, in order for me to unwind and not be "mom" at the moment. Because otherwise, I'll end up doing more of what I'm doing now, posting/reading when I should be teaching and that will lead to the downward spiral that is so hard to get out of again.

Overall, though, the schedule does work better for us. If it is planned, I do it. We are even getting art done! Plus, by having the older two work with the younger ones, they are learning things and getting read too, and the little ones look forward to it!

For example, the youngest is too young to participate in the art class, but he needs to be quiet so the others can concentrate. So I planned that time as his own special movie time. Last week I borrowed from the library the video of the Robert McCloskey Library collection. It had all his stories with beautiful art and a nice voice reading the stories of Lentil, Blueberries for Sal and others. He simply loved it. This week I borrowed, "Notes Alive, Dr. Seuss's My Many Colored Days." We got it on Wednesday, and this morning, before he even got dressed he brought me the movie and said, "Remember today is the day I get to watch this all be myself." That made me smile. And yes, I'm not mean enough that the other children won't get the opportunity to watch, but they have to wait until after their youngest sibling watches it all by himself first.

Now back to my regularly scheduled day. :-)

2 comments:

Presbytera said...

I haven't posted since school began and I am only teaching 3 days a week. I just don't know how to get it all done. I have oodles of pictures and thoughts and posts which ramble inside my head. Oh well. I can only do 3 things well at a time. FOr the past month it has been homeschooling, church responsibilities and watching the Indians play baseball. Perhaps after October baseball is over I'll be able to post more : )

Susan said...

Whenever I get disciplined and make a schedule, I invariably underestimate the amount of time everything takes, but most especially the amount of "me time." I keep wondering if I'm just horribly horribly selfish. (Well, I mean, I am. But I mean, selfish to the point of being dysfunctional as a mother.)

Paying the bills often takes 4 hours, not the 15 minutes I allow myself. I don't allow tv-time in the written schedule. I don't allow time for "wasting" to talk to the kids or my husband. I don't allow time for folding laundry, because after all, laundry just gets squeezed in around the edges and doesn't get its own slot. But all those little things actually do take time. And I just can't figure out how to make everything fit into the day.