Do you use a schedule for your high school students? OR do you just let him/her self pace the day away? Also what time to you start? This is the third child I am doing High School with but only the second I am teaching and the middle child in my house dd, she was always self paced student that is why she is so far ahead of her self. The ds I am now teaching is so easy going he said to me "Mom, you just get it all figured out and I will do what you tell me to do." WOW! (do you see the tears of joy falling on my screen?) So--- I am trying to decide if I want to block schedule him, rotate his lessons or what we have the following as our classes" Bible9- LP Math- Geometry 1 Science 9th SOS Spanish -Secondary first semester History and Geography LIfe Pak 9 Civics SOS + Drive Thru History sample dvd Language Arts LP9 - plus literature that I am putting together and Spelling via vocabulary lists in LPs. PE- Bowling twice a week and Fall Baseball league ( practice 1-2 hr a day plus games) Band- Non class at the moment but will be inserted and mess up any semblance of order eventually. This is what I am working with-- I know we started a thread a month ago or more with similar stuff so maybe someone can link to that too but I am totally thick headed today and wondering what I am going to do come Tuesday when I offica:?:ly start!
I don't know if I like it or not, but I make up daily assignments in all subjects and the kids check them off as they are completed each day. I cook at a preschool in the middle of each day, so I try to have some subjects they can just open and do without me. Your SOS should keep him on track, and if you have daily or weekly goals for the Lifepacs it should work well, too. I try not to schedule things too rigidly as a reward for the kids working at a good pace on their own. HOWEVER, if I notice some butts dragging, then I will tell them I expect such-and-such done by a certain time.
I make a weekly assignment sheet and my 9th grader just checks it off. He starts and finishes school each day however he wants. He tends to start after lunch and school into the evening. If you see in my other post we are a working family and both my dh and I have crazy schedules. So I don't follow the conventional idea of you got to teach your kid to get up at the crack of dawn. I have always had late shifts and on call schedule. My dh has a more traditional schedule but gets called out at night and out of town also
With sd we only had a slight schedule. We went over math at around 8am and then we went over other material around 1pm ( or for science 2 nights a week with Dad). I would give her an assignment sheet every Sunday night that would show what was due on on what day. For the first couple of years she worked without a formal schedule. During part of her senior year we would sit down each day and work on a daily schedule together.
I go over Faythe's stuff with her in the AM, and then she has the rest of the day to finish it as she wants.
geee, sigh, no one is a scheduler, Lol, I am thinking because the SOS has its calendar and I worked it out my way I will just follow that for him. Life Paks are easy to keep track of and the MUS too... So Even though I want to do a year at a glance, I kind of have tht with SOS.. My planner pages that I printed so far one week of I will do for one week... at a time, as it works. Then he can see what he needs to do for the week. does that sound like a HIgh School thing? I know he needs to see what to do cause he is that type of a kid, but my lazy sanguine side says just wing it, and then my melancholy side says NO WAY PLAN PLAN PLAN! lol do you see my problem
That is pretty much what I did with Homeschool Tracker +. Most days she had a History, Math and Foreign Lang assignment due. Other days she might have Health, Home Economics...or whatever we are doing. Most of her English assignments were not daily but every other day, depending on what she was reading.
Definitely a scheduler - except when I'm not I've been homeschooling for fifteen years, and we've done everything under the sun in terms of scheduling. You simply have to figure out what works best for your son and go from there. I have a daughter who is an obsessive list maker, and needs to know when she is doing what - uber organization freak. She excels in that environment. My eldest son, on the other hand, wanted to keep that control for himself. He exceled when he could attack what seemed to be the most taxing assignment early in the day when he had the most energy. So stick to one method long enough to give it a chance to settle in, and then if it doesn't work out make a change. All in all, though, for most of my children, having a schedule made them more organized and more focused.
thanks Springy! I needed that encouraging word. It is funny how I can have done this for so long and yet I have no inspiration to get things going. MY books are still in packaged, that never happened before! I figured if I could get busy with planning my planner it would help so I printed the week or so out got my SOS set up... I think have to check that out today too, We start on Tuesday and I am just not feeling it...
With my high schooler I would schedule set work for set days. He was allowed to work ahead, but not allowed to get behind. All I did was mark and schedule, I loved homeschooling a high schooler.
What works for one, doesn't work for all. We've always had a "schedule" of sorts... had to to keep up with who was doing what. I had the guidelines in my head, but let the kids decide the order of subjects for the schedule we printed. Both boys wanted math early as they felt they functioned better at that time. Daughter wanted it later. For me, I knew main subjects needed to be schedule for mornings so that if the day didn't get finished we were OK. So we do have daily schedule of work for each child. But it's not set in stone and used as a guide. When we hit that roadblock in Algebra 2, for example, and ds15 will need more than one day to learn a concept, we'll take that time and adjust future written schedules as needed. If life invades and I didn't teach them origami for Art last week, we'll just pick it up this week. We're flexible. Find what works for you and your family and tweek it to your needs. Just dont be so ridgid that if something happens you can't adjust! Just my two cents.
My oldest son is a senior my daughter is a freshmen. I allow my son to do his own thing but my dd has a schedule she set it herself and is responsible for making sure she gets stuff done. its nothing super strict.
Okay so what I am gathering from all of your wonderful responses is that I can plan out my plans but --- my son may change my plans, I may have to go back to my list a day method we did the last three years for him? I just wanted to do something different for him for HIgh school. but judging from what you all say about sticking with what works that is probably were we will go. IT will be fun for the first week if I get things more organised at least in my head lol And I have done that, so pretty much we are doing non computer classes in the am, and computer classes in the afternoon. I think this will work well!
What you may do is slowly work on transitioning to a new schedule. If he starts the year needing a day by day hour by hour schedule you start with that. Then you can take one subject, normally not a core one, and give him that assignment on Monday with a due date of Wed, and then a new assignment on Wed with a due date of Friday. See how he works managing his time. You can slowly transition new subjects so that he takes more responsibility for his own schedule which should be a goal in high school. When kids get to College they need the skill of scheduling their work and study time, especially with the rise of online classes.
