Homeschool Planning: The Big Blocks

This time of year, homeschooling mothers everywhere are planning for next year (see coping via fantasy life); meanwhile, mothers (and fathers) considering homeschooling are wondering where to start and how to plan.

Now, that first question -- where to start -- is its own very, very long conversation. The question of how to plan, too, boils down to the question of who you are, who your children are, and how you want to live when they're at home with you all day. The plans you make -- whom they concern, with what pursuits those people will be occupied, and when and how -- will have some bearing on the quality of life in your house, which at least in the beginning is almost more important than the quality of the education they represent, though I am far from not caring about quality of education, let me assure you.

Anyway. At this time of year, posts on this blog tend to represent my own planning process. You see the compulsive making of booklists. You see the random large thoughts. You see the observation of specimens in the wild. And then at some point, because I have to have a chart to look at before I can start to visualize its all getting done, you get the Big Blocks of Time:

Weekly Schedule

Grades 4 & 5

2013-2014

Monday Breakfast Basket Bible OT poetry Famous Men	Tuesday Breakfast Basket Bible NT Old-World fiction	Wednesday Breakfast Basket Bible OT Old-World fiction	Thursday Breakfast Basket Bible NT Old-World fiction	Friday Breakfast Basket Bible OT Old-World fiction
Written Work/Computer Math 20m Copywork 10m Grammar 10m German 20m	Written Work/Computer Math 20m Copywork 10m Grammar 10m German 20m	Written Work/Computer Math 20m Copywork 10m Grammar 10m German 20m	Written Work/Computer Math 20m Copywork 10m Grammar 10m German 20m	Written Work/Computer  Math 20m Dictation  10m Grammar 10m German 20m
Reading Old World 20m Religion 20m Literature 20m	Reading New World 20m Science 20m Geography 20m	Reading Old World 20m Religion 20m Literature 20m	Reading New World 20m Science 20m Geography 20m	Reading Old World 20m Religion 20m Literature 20m
Lunch Basket GYM AND SWIM NO LUNCH BASKET	Lunch Basket Geography Life of Fred Abraham Lincoln’s World	Lunch Basket Science Life of Fred Abraham Lincoln’s World	Lunch Basket NOON MASS No lunch basket	Lunch Basket Art Life of Fred New World Fiction

This is a slightly amended and formalized visualization of what we do now on a daily basis. Right now our "basket" reading happens all at lunch, and we just kind of double up sometimes, or read at night, to compensate for days when outside activities cut our morning routine short. What's valuable to me about this, though, is that it enables me to see each day in blocks:  four discrete chunks of time between breakfast and lunch, during which some things happen in at least a loose order. 

Note that I don't append times of the day to these blocks. I don't say that school is going to start at 8 because in my house, school does not start at 8. I mean, it might. Sometimes people like to get up and do their work over what in our house would be an early breakfast. But I'm not going to commit myself to 8, or any other hour, as a start time for school, because all that would happen if I did would be that I drove myself and everyone around me insane with guilt generated by the dissonance between the number on the schedule and reality. 

So we don't do that. On the other hand, our day is not without structure. We have a routine -- it just happens to be kind of movable. But you can see how it plays out:  

1. Some reading aloud, preferably over breakfast. The best time to read to people, I increasingly find, is when they're sitting down eating. 

2. Independent written work/work on the computer. By now the kids are pretty well trained to get out what they need and get going. At the beginning of the year, we always have some faffing about and uncertainty, but that dies down pretty fast. I find that the easiest way to cope with this part of our routine is to have The Same Thing Happen Every Day, No Matter What. Really we could do grammar only twice a week, for example, but when I schedule it for only twice a week, all too quickly that becomes no times a week. If it happens every day, then we all remember. So -- shorter lessons, but daily. Ditto German. We just are all-or-nothing people. 

3. Daily reading. This can vary from day to day, although again, we need a rhythm. There are Monday-Wednesday-Friday books, and there are Tuesday-Thursday books. If a book gets finished, I'm ready with another to pop into the reader's school box for next time. I make booklists for each subject, bearing in mind that some books will go quickly and some will take all year -- in fact, I'm now seeing The Way Things Work as possibly a two-year course for my rising 5th grader. One of my goals is to include more books on my lists than anyone could possibly read, and then rank them first chronologically, if they're history, and then in order of priority, with the must-reads at the top and any other good-but-not-totally-necessary books as backups should the urgent ones not take as long as I think they will. For high school I do sit down with each book and break it into however many reading assignments I need for the year, so that I can schedule them;  for primary, I just assign reading for X amount of time, and there's always another book waiting when that one is done. 

4. Lunch reading. Two reading blocks will give me time to cover more via read-alouds for both children; besides, I think that breaking what's now one big dose of read-aloud into two smaller doses will be better for everyone's attention span. Within the bigger lunch block there's still variety -- something to listen to and narrate, then Life of Fred, which involves listening, mental math, and usually some stuff written out in dry-erase pen on the tile-topped table as well -- and then another listen-and-narrate reading. 

So, how long will school take us next year? I am finding the use of a timer efficacious already, particularly for my one wool-gatherer, who can drag what ought to be an hour's worth of table work out to last all day, as if he savored it, which he doesn't. It really helps for me simply to say, "Twenty minutes, and then you're done." So I am anticipating doing this for everything from the beginning next year, because letting people take their sweet time is a drag for everyone. 

Anyway, the breakdown:  

1. Read-aloud:  20 minutes

2. Written work:  1 hour

3. Reading:  1 hour

4. Read-aloud:  30-40 minutes, all told

This means we're looking at roughly a 3-hour school day, exclusive of things like Mass in the morning, chores, interruptions, distractions, etc. And while assuredly I'll tinker with this schedule, and then be flexible in the actual living of it, laying things out like this helps me to visualize where to plug in the books on my ever-expanding lists, and how many of them I can realistically hope to use in one year's time.

PS:  For grid forms like the one above, plus more other homeschooling-related printables than you can possibly imagine right now, visit DonnaYoung.org.