Homeschool Planning 101: Define Your Focus and Schedule (Part 2 of 3)

We are in the second part of a series dedicated to Homeschool Planning.  (click here to see my first post Homeschool Planning 101: Setting Goals)  This post if focused on how and what to plan.

We have given our plans to the Lord, written down the ideas we received somewhere so we can revisit  pray over them, jotted down long term and short term goals.  Today we will take a more focused and detailed look at how we make those goals reality.

Getting Focused

Now comes a decision making moment.  What is your family’s main focus?  That focus, or mission statement if you will,  will guide you in this decision making process.  Everything you do in your homeschool days and extra-curricular activities should fit within this broadly stroked goal.

Need some examples to get your juices flowning?  Here are some real life family focused mission statements from the web, a friend, and myself.

 

From a dear friend Heather, who will hopefully soon have a blog:

The Durfee Family – The Big Picture:

“Goals:  Hearts turned towards heaven, the family and home…  To be wise about what is good, innocent of evil; to know who they are as Godly young men; be courageous and noble gentlemen.  Have a firm foundation in the Word and Creation Science; a love for other and the outdoors; be able to transition to college level classes/CLEP and finish at University if so desired; to be able to support their future families; self-motivated learners; courting not dating; have an appreciation for music/play and take lessons as family is able; commemorate entering manhood, graduation, etc; make memories as a family as we live life intentionally and to the fullest (furthering interests, talents, hikes, tickle, games, family time, traditions), and aim for about 50 memory verses a year.”

 

The Espinoza Family Mission Statement:

“To be Christ centered in all the we do. Keeping family as the central place to grow in the fruit of the Spirit.  Never making a burden on the family as a whole for the personal interests of one member of the family without prayer and the leading of the Holy Spirit to do so.  To give our desires and interests to the Lord allowing Him to lead us.  To have a firm foundation in the Word of God, prayer and personal discipline, making time to serve others with our talents. To be good stewards of the things given to us by God whether material or spiritual.  To be good stewards of the earth. To give to the community of our time and energies making it a place that honors God to the best of our abilities.  To be faithful and diligent with the tasks given to us.  Have a love for learning and able to learn anything that God leads us in.  To have a love for music and fulfill the desire to be trained in playing instruments.  To stay within budget not getting ourselves in debt while tithing.  To teach the children homemaking skills, independence, God/self-reliance, and love others and be loved.  To keep their purity in all things.  To reach the world for Christ and give our time to Him.  To have a solid understanding of history and science from the eyes of the Lord, learning about the martyrs and fathers of our faith, as well as missionaries.  Keeping the world as whole in our minds and hearts through prayer and teaching.”

Our’s is a bit lengthy and a little less detailed than Heather’s, comparing these in a healthy way, I see where we can give some more detail and specifics to our mission statement.  At the same time, what we have for our family motto is also something that I can see us fitting all of our homeschool courses and extra curricular activities into.

Not sure if how to come up with a family mission statement?  Focus on the Family has a great blog post about this. You may look at Passionate Homemaking to find another great way to go about this, along with their family mission statement.  And here is a homeschool specific mission statement from Mariannes Underland.com that is really tangible.

We are going to use Marianne’s tool for coming up with a more year specific mission statement.  I will make sure you see that next week when we add more to our plans.

Method Options and Does the Method Matter?

In my personal opinion, what ever method you choose to use, or methods, does not make a difference in whether you need to plan or not.  Everyone needs to plan!  You may not need to be as detailed in one way or another with the different methods.  The main thing that does matter is that your method, or methods, fit that mission statement we just worked on.

Method Options:

• Classical
• Unit Studies
• Charlotte Mason
• Montessori Type Methods
• Ecclectic
• Curriculum Based Programs from Schools (aka Abeka, Bob Jones)
• Un-Schooling
• The Waldorf Method
• Internet Homeschooling

You have a plethora of options as you can see.  This can be a good and bad situation. The good: you may choose many different options to teach the different subjects and tailor them to fit each child individually if need be.  The bad: so many choices touting their wonders and perfection can often cause us to be overwhelmed and feel as though we may never make a right choice.

I have seen mothers (and been this mother) bounce from the next best thing every year, and throughout the year, spending gobs of money and even getting in debt to give their children the best.  Often times, they don’t even use the full program, or any part of the costly purchase because it really didn’t fit the family as a whole.  The plus side, with this kind of mistake, you can often re-sell the materials you purchase.  But as you can see the downside of living this way is inconsistency and not truly following the mission statement in making your choices.

The key is to keep the mission, budget, and overall goal for each month and year in mind.  For us, we tend towards a combination approach that could be considered ecclectic, unit study, classical approach but with a Charlotte Mason style.

Our ways keep the costs down, allows for flexibility with the budget by using living books from the library or our home library, teaching all ages most subjects at the same time, gives focused time to their personal tastes and desires, and also covers our history and science with a rotation that makes sure all is being covered and digested at the child’s level and ability.  You will get to see more of this as we work through the next portion of the post.

Planning Your Week and Days

It might seem as though this is a little wrong, planning our week before we plan our year, but for me this is a must.  I need to be able to see how my week will look before I lay out my detailed schedule.

Working the schedule out means looking at what we have that regularly occurs in our weeks.

We attend a homeschool co-op that is not focused on any certain curriculum; ie: Tapestry of Grace, Konos, or Classical Converstaions.  Us mothers teach what is on our hearts.   This can include Cooking, Spanish, World Lit, Biology, Chess, etc just to name a few.  We have over 120 children attending now which makes this very fun and a very full day.  It includes 4 classes that each child can take, starts at 8:30 am and goes until 1:30 pm.  We can pick and choose what classes and how many we take.  Our family chooses to participate in the whole day, which means we stay late to clean and visit as well.

This also means that for the more in depth classes we will have work that needs to be completed and scheduled at home.  I could choose to have my kids do all this work on their own time, or I can choose to include in a part of our day when I schedule my week.  I choose the latter.

For us it seems as though we loose a day.  Technically we do not as far as the State Laws are concerned, but for my personal plans for our days it does change how we look at our week.  We are often wiped out on Friday’s.  This means I need to remember how we have been in the past when I plan my days.  Friday work needs to be done on a light level, or Friday can be a day off which means that we are “doing school” 4 days a week.  (For our State we need 172 days a year, 4 hours a day, or a total of 688 hours and we are required to cover certain subjects as well.)

To meet the State requirements I need to keep all of this in mind.  I can choose to start schooling in August, September or even later, but I still have to meet those requirements.  For me, I like to be a little flexible as I know that life happens.  I choose to start the “new” year in August.  We work Monday-Friday, with a light day on Friday and spread the work throughout the whole year.  This past year we took the summer months off, this year we will school through the summer, with larger breaks throughout the year.

You can choose to mark your school days on a family calendar with a pencil in case things need to change, print out a calender from resources online but make sure that you consider your families vacations, etc. when filling this out, or you can make you own plan simply by making a weeks list; meaning : Week 1, Week 2 , etc.  filling each week out as you plan or as you work.

I recommend keeping your family calender marked with your school weeks and days to some degree, if your family is really busy.  Why?  For the reason that we can forget appointments when planning projects and that can affect the project or week greatly.

Here are some examples of Weekly Schedules to consider

More Normal Scheduling:

•  5 days per week,  4 hours per day, 34.4 weeks
• 4 days per week,  4 hours per day, 43 weeks
• 3 days per week for our school, not counting  Thursdays, 4 hours per day, 57.3 weeks

More Hours than 4 per day:

• 5 days per week, 6 hour days, 22+ weeks
• 4 days per week, 5 hour days, 34.5 weeks
• 3 days per week, 6 hour days, 38+ weeks

Another option, planning vacation weeks:

• 5 days per week, taking every 7th week off
• 4 days per week, taking every 12th week off
• 5 days a week, working with the public schools vacation days

 

Routine and Flexible Schedule

No matter your method or your weeks, your daily life needs to have consistency to the best of your ability.  Children, fathers, and mothers, all thrive when living in a balanced routine.  I am not asking you to forsake your leading’s from the Holy Spirit, nor am I trying to snuff out your creative spark, but trust me when I tell you, we all need this.

I am the creative, fly by the seat of my pants type, with a weird other half that deeply loves organization.  I often feel like two people in one body, no I am not crazy.  I say it this way because I know the part of me that loves living without constraints, time frames, dead lines, or have-to’s.  But I also know the other half or third of me, who needs some form of order, planning, focus, and time limits.

What I have found is that I am not boxed in when I have order and routine, or even detailed plans.  I actually end up thriving more.  I become more creative in short bursts, have time for everything (most days) and feel way less stress.  Working like this frees my mind, my time and allows me to be there for my kids, husband, others and have time for myself.

I encourage you, if you have never hammered out a detailed plan for one day, start with a routine at least.

How does this work?  I will give you an example of a routine and a flexible schedule.

A routine works like this:

• Wake up, eat breakfast and spend time with the Lord, workout, make bed, shower and get dressed
• Fix the children’s breakfast while they get up, get dressed and clean rooms
• Spend time in the word as a family while eating breakfast
• Do morning chores
• Get going on school
• Eat a snack
• More School
•  Mom starts fixing lunch
• Eat lunch while reading aloud
• Afternoon chores
• More school if needed
• Play and quiet time
• Children do quick pick up while Mom starts dinner
• Eat dinner, read the bible as a family, dinner clean up, and have the evening to do what we do as a family

The routine does not have a set time frame.  It is just the same things repeated in order, in forward motion.  The order can even be switched from time to time, but the forward motion is happening consistently.  This was our plan for ages and it worked, but then life became more complicated as my children aged and we needed to add more school work and activities to our lives.  My husband’s schedule also changes on a regular basis so this routine can get out of whack.  A real schedule has been more helpful for us as time has passed on.  When life is slower, we tend to lean back into this routine, because we can.

Something to add in here, I do keep track of times when we live like this.  For instance, 30 minutes of Math, 30 minutes of Handwriting, 1 hour Reading Aloud (we can do this all day!), etc.  You need a place to see how long you are spending time on your school work.  You need to keep track of those hours.  So if you desire a more flexible approach, then track your time and what you do.

A flexible schedule works like this:

• 45 minutes quiet/prayer time for mom
• 30 minutes exercise for mom
• 30 minutes shower/dress for mom and children
• 1 hour cleaning/home management
• 2 hours meals/prep
• 5 hours school and playtime with children/mom works around the house and teaches during school
• 1 hour blogging/facebook/emails
• 3 hours herb class for mom
• 1 1/2 hours alone time with husband
• 2 hours margin time
• 7 hours of sleep (sometimes sleep cuts into margin time!)

As you see here, this is a fairly detailed picture of my life.  You get to see how I try to do what I know God is calling me to at this time as I nurture the family.  Your flexible schedule will probably look very different!  This is flexible in that I can have a basic routine and yet make plans to fit our nailed down time frames for different activities.

As our family ages, chooses activities, etc.  we will have to change this format.  At this time, this schedule fits our goals for the family.  I change things out to fit other plans when I need to.  For instance, we have some friends invite us over for an afternoon of play.  My herb class and margin time will probably have to go on that day.  But the following days, the time slots will be there for me to catch up when I can.

There is no set schedule like at 8:00 am we are doing cleaning, or quiet/prayer time for mom.  This allows me to follow our routine style, with time frames given to each task.  I find that this method really works for our family.  And yes, I do set timers for many of our activities.  Timers help me stay on task and gives my children a bit of comfort knowing that the end is near or that they will have some play time with me when the blog timer goes off.

A great resource for helping you look at your life and plan more effectively is the book Say Goodbye to Survival Mode by Crystal Paine from Money Saving Mom.com.

Fixed Schedule

This will be a new addition this year!  We have always had our routine but we have never had a detailed plan laid out for the school work part of our lives.  I have often felt like we should sense where our children are at and then pick and choose what would be best to study next.  Working out a fixed schedule for our school hours is going to give my children some more comfort as they will know what to expect and even be able to participate in the planning part of our day.  It may even motivate them to do more. We shall see.

This will be based on your above weekly schedule.  It will also differ based on your method.  Some methods lend themselves to easy scheduling and come with weekly print outs, just fill in the blanks.  Other methods require more thinking, especially where projects are concerned.  Then you have to think about age groups.  Are you schooling your children together in a unit type way?  Do they all do their own individual work?  How much are you working with them together, or one-on-one?

These questions above are what led us to make the choices we made for our family and why we choose to do things a little different.  Whatever you choose to do, you will need to see how it all fits together.  For me, even if my kids are working separately, I still have them all working on the same subject at the same time.  It keeps things flowing better and they can always do what they need to do to finish something when our day is done.

Choosing Your Scheduling Method

Here are some sample schedules from Simply Charlotte Mason.com that have helped me see the larger picture for my week.  Keep in mind that for the Charlotte Mason Method, children are usually never working for more than 30-45 minutes on one subject, and that time frame is geared more towards the high school years.   I also encourage you to peruse the above website thoroughly as she gives many free helps in planning your year and curriculum.

Make sure you also check out the plethora of information that Intoxicated On Life has on their homeschool tab.  So many wonderful helps, printables, encouragement, and excellent curriculum that we will be using with our family this year.  You can gather these up now to help you when we get on with more planning next week.

Choosing your method, your schedule whether fixed, flexible or routine will definitely have an impact on exactly what you do each day.  We will take the time next week to fill in the meat of our schedules.  Like what books we will read when, how many pages of math or science per day, when we do the nature study, handicrafts, etc.

For now, take the time to put together a loose schedule, or routine, based on your ideas and be ready to get to more details next week.  Gather supplies and book lists, pray, pray, pray, and start easing your family into the new routine by waking them up when you would like them to be up come the school season and start following your loose routine.  Working on things like this now will help you with your new habits in the future.

What ways have you found helpful in establishing routine?  Do you work best with a flexible or fixed schedule?  What tips do you have?  Please Share!

The Rest of the Series…

Part 1: Setting Your Goals

Part 3: Putting Your Plan into Practice