School Daze

This week, the day after Labor Day, we began our fourteenth year of homeschooling. What a week it's been! Not only did we start schooling within our home, but our outside activities kicked in with a vengeance. Unbelievably, we have squeezed ten music classes, a Keepers at Home meeting, and three hours' worth of co-op classes into the past three days.

I posted earlier about my desire to redeem my time and use it more effectively. I consider our schedule still very much in the tweaking phase, but it seems to be working. I've blocked off one hour of one-on-one time per school-age child (there are four), and 30 minutes of "pre-school" time with my oldest preschooler, which will probably have to be moved since it's scheduled for 8:30 a.m. and he's just not a morning person (and comes by that honestly).

I'm allowing blocks of time for each subject. For instance, instead of doing one page of math a day, do as much as you can within the time allowed. This should enable us to work ahead, since we have one day a week when we are hardly home due to outside classes.

During my one-on-one time for each child, I cover teaching instruction in all subjects. They will do the actual work during the time scheduled for those individual subjects.

We have set up an area with a large dry erase board, table, and bench; this is where I handle individual instruction. The board is wonderful! I wish we'd had one a long time ago. It's great for working math problems. I still prefer the couch for reading, though.

Respect each other's individual time; don't interrupt!

Christian first language arts lesson was a hoot! His example of an interrogative sentence was: "Hell, what's your name?" (he left out the "o" in "hello"). For a sentence which makes a command, he wrote: "Go do you's school." I don't know what kind of brain fog overcame him during the summer, but we are not Yankees!

Hayden asked me to teach him Russian this year for high school foreign language (which actually locks us into at least two years). I have a B.A. in Russian, but I'm more than a little rusty considering I graduated sixteen years ago. I am going to teach him three days a week. We've only done one, but already he says it's his favorite subject. I just hope I can stay a step ahead, refresh my memory, and not disappoint him!

Well, I hope I didn't bore you, but Crew Mom said to give her more scheduling talk!