Scheduling

So far, it has worked best for us to keep our scheduling and organization tools really simple. We don't have a dedicated "schoolroom" and we don't do well with schedules that are planned out to the minute, so we've figured out pretty much the minimum of what we need to help our days run smoothly.

When planning the daily schedules of our study units, I use a simple spreadsheet program (Numbers, on my iPad) to keep track of which books and which activities we'll do each day. These unit lesson plans and schedules are in posts labeled "Unit Schedules" on this blog.

I use these three whiteboards for our family schedule, our dinner schedule, and our homeschool schedule during a given week. The homeschool schedule is just a more basic version of what's in my Numbers Spreadsheet, because the children like to look on the board and see what's coming up in our studies.

I made several magnets for each member of the family, plus some others that say "Doctor appointment" "Piano lesson" "Field Trip" etc. to use on these white boards. I just printed out little pictures from the computer, covered them with clear packing tape, cut them out, and stuck a rectangle of magnetic tape on the back. Easy and fast.

Each child is a dinner helper on one of the nights. I let them help choose what their meal will be (I have a big list of "meals we like" in a note on my iPad, which they can look at to help them decide). If there's something new I want to try, I either do it on one of the littler kids' nights, or I overrule one of the other children. Same thing if there are specific ingredients we need to use up.

As more children have gotten old enough to help, we have added "Breakfast Helpers" to four days as well. Sometimes if I have to be gone at breakfast time (driving children to co-op, etc.), Daisy or Junie will make breakfast for the rest of the children. They can make several recipes by themselves.

The other children who aren't being dinner helper, clean up one room (each) during Dinner Prep time.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are busy days for us and we don't get home till late, so those are usually crock pot or other really quick, simple meals. Someday maybe I'll get better at planning ahead for those.

Our daily schedule right now looks something like this:

Piano practice (whoever gets there first)

Breakfast and cleanup

Devotional

More piano practice, while other children each clean up one room

Personal scripture study/last clean up/Free time

"Family School Time" (all together; optional for little ones but they have to play quietly if they aren't learning with us)

[Sometimes we split this time into Older Kids and Younger Kids]

Lunch and cleanup

"Schoolwork Time"

Little ones nap

School children do workbooks (math, spelling, grammar, handwriting)

Free time

Dinner prep and Dinner

Cleanup

Bedtime

Other notes:

• Notice I didn't put times on here. The times change from day to day but the order is pretty consistent.
• The older kids sometimes add Foreign Language (through Duolingo) to their Schoolwork Time as well.
• One day a week we have piano lessons and choir replacing the Schoolwork time.
• We also do field trips fairly often.
• Wednesday nights after dinner it's "Cleanup Night." We all go around together and tidy the house/put things away; it takes us about 30 minutes to an hour.
• Thursday is Laundry Day
• Friday afternoons we don't have Schoolwork. Instead, it's Cleaning Day---we put away our laundry (each person puts away his or her own), the boys clean the bathrooms and tidy the rest of the rooms, and we do the cleaning and polishing of the kitchen together. Jobs like window washing or vacuuming are assigned based on the week.
• Friday night is usually Date Night for Sam and me. Now that we have several permanent babysitters it is wonderful! The children know how to cook several simple meals by themselves, so they prepare one of these when we go out.