Our New "System" of Homeschooling

I like things to be organized, but I'm not a great organizer.  I appreciate having a routine, but I struggle to stick to a timetable.  For the last couple of years I've been trying to wrap my mind around creating a routine with enough flexibility to account for the many surprises life has in store for a young family of six.

A couple of months ago, I finally worked out a way to have a routine that isn't tied to the clock and empowers my older girls to be more independent.  It's still a work in progress, but I feel like it's well on the way to getting order into our lives.

I started off by writing out a weekly schedule for each of the two older girls.  It wasn't arranged by times, but by subjects and chores - e.g. Maths, English, Chickens (feeding and watering), Prayer, etc.  For each day of the week, I added some specifications for each subject.  Some subjects/chores were left blank for certain days of the week - e.g. we don't do Science every day and the girls alternate days looking after the chickens and watering the garden (although the watering hasn't happened for months because we've had plenty of rain).

The schedule definitely helped, but there was a lack of accountability, and so the girls were leaving out whole chunks of their schedule because they either didn't know what to do for a subject like Science (and they didn't want to come and ask me because that would be work!), or they really didn't want to be bothered with cleaning their room on a Wednesday.

So then I got a bunch of index cards, wrote a child's name, day of the week, and the month on each one, and wrote a list of things that were to be covered for that day down the left hand side.  I then ruled four (or five) columns for the weeks of the month (so five columns for Wednesday if there are five Wednesdays in a particular month) and labelled them W1, W2, W3, W4.  The idea is, each day they get out the card for that day of the week, and then tick the tasks as they do them (they can refer to their schedule if they need more detail - e.g. the card says "Maths", but some days "Maths" is to be mental maths, and other days they have the option of playing a thinking game).  For each day that they tick off all their expected tasks, they can put a sticker on the calendar (some days I tell them to cross off particular tasks because we have other commitments or something can't be done that day). Of course, all this could be done on the computer, but I actually like doing it by hand... And at the end of the month I turn the card over and use the other side for the next month.

Lots of stickers on the calendar means some kind of reward at the end of the month.  Last month went great.  This month has had some interruptions and they've kind of dropped the ball, but that's OK, because now there's some kind of accountability and it gives me a visual representation of their general behaviour.  I was finding before I put this system into place that I would often feel like we hadn't really had a good day, but couldn't put into words why, but now I can point out to them - "you got as far as making your bed, and then went off and did your own thing without asking me.  I want you to work on your responsibilities without me nagging you every step of the way."  And of course, on the other hand, it helps me to recognize and appreciate the really good days and to separate the two older girls rather than get upset with both when just one of them has been slacking off, but the other has been diligent.

Now I'm doing some more tweaking and working on defining the "projects" more clearly for them, so they can start to work independently on a long-term project.  I'm also thinking of dropping "English" off the list altogether and incorporating it into the other subjects - teaching spelling and writing through the things that write for those other subjects.  I may consider incorporating "Maths" more into other subjects as well and perhaps only covering it a couple of days a week as its own subject.

I have so much more to grow in - above all, maintaining my priorities in the right order!  On these cards, I've tried to write the tasks in priority/chronological order, although sometimes I've forgotten an important task until I got to the end of the list. :)

Anyway, I'm sharing this in the hopes that it might be helpful to other homeschool Mums (or Moms!) in developing their own unique systems.  Feel free to ask any questions :)