I started homeschooling at the winter break last year we pulled my son so that one semester was for figuring things out etc..went great but I want to start this year strong with a plan I was reading Lisa Whelchel's book So you think you want to homeschool even though we have already made the decision liked reading all the ideas. She said they did the core each morning Bible, Math, Reading, Writing, Language arts then took one day a week to do the other subjects. Monday - History, Tuesday - Science and so on....I thought this sounded great spend an hour or two straight on one of these subjects instead of trying to fit them all in every day...my son isn't great at switching gears a lot. Has anyone done this? I would love advice
Our plan is to do a little bit of each subject a day. We are planning on having a transition activity or worksheet between each subject. Like say History to Math so the transition would be a historical color by number page. We are looking to move to a bigger house so we will have some room to have a homeschool room. Where we can actually sit down and not have to worry about other distractions like her toys and stuff. Since we are going TV free it will probably be the living room.
I've got it planned out kinda like that. Science is 2 days Wed & Fri, Art and Civics are on Friday. After we start I will see how it works and make changes as needed.
I think it worked best for us to do the cores every day and the history and science alternately. we have pretty much kept this style up for most of our going into 14 years ( wow where does the time go) Started that way because there was less to do in the SC and H?G books annd so we worked for an hour on each of the main classes, half hour for Bible though, it always went fast. Lang arts includes reading writing, spellng, grammar... so that was one hour and Math one hour. That was how the books had it set up to do that we were using, they had suggested one hour for each of those subjects.. worked great for us! But we did need the two days for the other two courses and any arts and such PE all that came when we fit them in depeding on the year.
Since alot of the subjects can be crossed like science and reading/writting sometimes you may not need to focus to much on one subject to get the job done. We may not teach math every day but their are alot of fun projects that can include math.
my goal is to do math 4 days a week this year, and Grammar 5 days, History 4 days, Science 4 days plus co op once a whenever it is for experiments. Bible every day. did I miss anything? I have writting 2-3 days, and vocab same. PE often as I can get him to join in it and Art 3-4 depending on co op as well. He has his own art class but may join a painting class with co op as well.
The biggest thing is to figure out what works best for YOU. I'm a history-every-day person, but that's because I really like history. I set a GOAL of how many days a week I do each subject. Math 5, language 5, history 4-5, etc. If I miss, I will try to really push that subject the next week. An alternative to history/science alternating is to hit a history topic hard for two weeks, then quit history altogether and do science for two weeks. There's good and bad for doing it this way, am just suggesting that it works for SOME. (Classroom teachers do this a lot!)
We alternnated daily, with oru history and science I should clarify, that way we kept upwith both, and when we had experiments they checked that daily as per assignment regardless of if it was Science day. I looked athow my 8th grade lessons were because I coudl actually remember those ones and set my kids on a revolving scheduel one year, it did not work! lol But like Jackie said you have to think about whatyour kids will need more work on and what will come easy because they love it! then alot the time needed that way.
We do Math, Spelling, Writing, and reading daily We do grammar and Science twice a week And we do History three times a week We only do a 4 day school week so some of those twice a week subjects overlap. Amy
Our public schools did it similar to that and it was one of the things they did that was right. I do not think it is a good idea to run around trying to switch topics all afternoon just to say you got it all in. It is better to dive in to o ne subject and start and finish what you are working on and then do the next on another day. For me, I will start something, like science. When we complete what we are doing, or we are just ready to move on, we do. Then it might be social studies next (I use that broad term for geography, history, etc).
Here's how we break down the week. Ds is a rising 3rd grader. We follow Charlotte Mason's method of short lessons (15 min each) and free afternoons: DAILY Silent Reading Poetry Copywork Classic lit readaloud Math 2 OR 3X A WEEK History Science Grammar Maps/Geography WEEKLY Artist Sudy Composer Study Nature Study Spanish Latin
This what we do: Daily: Math, English ( grammar, writing, spelling , workbooks, etc), PE ( gym) Monday, Wednesday: History Tuesday, Thursday: Science and Co-Op classes ( art, crafts, music lessons, life skils, etc) Friday: Science experiments, History projects, left over writing assignments, Social Studies ( geography, cultural lessons)
I did a year of the little bit of everything kind-of-day and it did not work for us. So last year I went with a general plan of hour many total hours I wanted to spend on each subject during the school year. I basically did core items everyday but history was part of our core since a lot of our language arts were tied together with history. Then we would spend time on the non-core subjects. I liked the freedom of an open-ended schedule.
Thanks for all the help ladies! I think i am going to start out doing Bible, Math, and Language Arts (reading, writing, phonics etc.) every morning then take a short break to go outside have a snack etc then try doing social studies two days a week science two days a week then do sign language (his language pick) one day a week might have to wind up switching it up if that isn't working!
This is how ours is going to break down as of right now... DS is going into 2nd grade Daily Math Grammar Reading Spelling 3 days a week Handwriting (his is awful so we will be doing a formal program this year) History 2 days a week Bible Science 1 day a week Artist study Composer Study Theme based art project
We have always seperated days. This year we have DAILY: math, silent reading, grammar/writing, US States (we are going through the Highlights Which Way USA books and want to get them all done in 1 year so we are doing this daily) MWF: spelling, US History (we are going through the book that we have spent the last 3 years going through as a review) TT: handwriting (because his is bad), Science M: Music, T: PE, W: Art, T: PE, F: health I'm going to be adding typing and language soon. Garrett wants to learn Chinese and continue with his ASL... I'm thinking of Spanish before we try to learn Chinese but he wants to be able to talk to the people at the Chinese restraunt..lol. I already have Spanish so it's more logical.
We do this but our core is Japanese, Math, and Science. We do those everyday and then we do the other subjects 2-3 times a week. Last year we did history everyday and not science but I purchased waaaaaaaaay too much stuff for the Middle School Physics program when I was deciding which projects to recommend to parents, and now I feel like we should do them all. Plus, that Legos NXT has been sitting the box forever...if we are doing physics we might as well just finish it up as well. And...the History Channel was having a special deal on the First 50 years of Space Exploration so I am going to make a huge unit study on that...and then I am sending him to Space Camp in the Spring.... I guess this will be a total science year! :lol: He'll either love it or hate it by next June....
I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure this out as well. I think we're going to do: Everyday: Math, Language arts (Reading, spelling, grammar) , and Handwriting 3 Days a week: Science and History 2 Days a week: Bible Every Friday we have co-op which will include: French, PE, music and Art. Throughout the week we'll definitely be doing various PE and art lesson also.
