How do you decide how much to do each day (a goal to aim for anyways)? The most obvious, to me, is total lessons (or pages) divided by weeks (in your school year), which gives you how many lessons to get done weekly. Does anyone else do it that way? Differently? Also, how many weeks is your homeschool year? I am going with 41 I think. I just did all my kids' books this way and it looks like a very little amount of work per day! 1 - 2 pages or 1 lesson daily...does that sound about right? I scheduled a typical week to be M-Th only. This year, we just kind of "winged it" and ended up finished way early.
We just kinda wing it. If I feel like we've fallen behind I might pick up the pace for a week or two. In the end we'll finish his first grade math around the first week of June. He finished his AAS level 1 just before Christmas so we moved on to level 2. We do 1 page of grammar a day. He'll finish it when he finishes it. I plan to just keep up this way for now. Part of homeschooling for me is to let them work at their pace so I don't really pre-plan too far ahead because I never know what they might work through faster than planned or slower than planned.
I schedule by time. We have 38 weeks or 192 days here. I use a combined block schedule and loop schedule.
I don't really schedule, just do the next thing for the most part. I try to look ahead and have things ready for the next lesson at the end of the current day. So say we do math, science and art.. these are all things that need supplies for us.. I will look to the next lesson in each of them before they are put away for the day and get out what ever hands on things we may need ready right then and there. We don't do science every day, but I will know that for the most part, anything I may need will be already gathered. I don't worry so much about when we finish things... if we finish something we just move on to the next thing... so say we finish our math books, well we may take a week off of it (or we may not) and then go on into the next level. We do homeschool year around pretty much... we have a few longer breaks like 6 weeks from Thanksgiving to Christmas and 8 weeks from May to July, but even during those 2 breaks, we do some school.. we just back off a bit and are more relaxed.
We wing it as well. I don't like winging it. I know we're finishing what we need to, but I am definitely going to be creating a more set schedule once we finish this year, so we can go ahead and start the next "school year"
Our homeschool year is 48 weeks (a bit longer than most). For a few subjects, the work is based on a textbook or something similar, so yes, we just divide to work out what should be done each week. Daily is fine, but weekly allows some flexibility if they get stuck on something. I’ll put up a list of where they should be at the end of each week with suggestions for each day. Then I’ll have fun extra work for if/when they finish the week’s work early. Younger kids might respond better to daily lists though. 1-2 pages might be a lot or not much, it depends on the content. For Latin, 2 pages (one chapter) will take one week: every day they read the text aloud, then work through some more of the questions. By the end of the week they’re pretty solid with it, and since there are only about forty chapters in the year-long textbook, this works out well. But for English, even 2 pages a day would be far too few and they’d fly through it. So base it a bit on time as well as content. If they finish early, great! Just have some extra things for them to do to consolidate/extend what they’ve learnt, and try to make them fun as an incentive. And try to have a few weeks of flexible room up your sleeve so that if they have trouble with something you can spend more time on it.
We do not use a strict schedule. I type one out at the beginning of the year so I can get a basic idea as to how long it will take to get through our lessons. We begin our school year in the beginning of June and end the beginning of April. We do not take the usual breaks that public schools take so we end up coving a lot more days than we would if we stick to a set schedule.
What you described sounds exactly like what we do... divide by number of weeks, and aim for a 4 day week. We work appx 36 wks (plus a few weeks in the summer, but not on the main subjects). Each Sunday night, I look at our calendar to figure out what we have planned for the week and then schedule school work around it. Life comes first, and school comes second. Yes, it usually works out to only a page or two per day in any given subject, and we don't do all subjects every day.
I don't really plan out a schedule. I use the worldbook typical course of study as our guideline and our resources are mainly based on that. Ds (11, 5th grade) does about 2 hrs of academic seatwork maybe 4 days a week. His education also comes from just about everything else: autonomous creativity, pursuing interests, field trips, etc. Time requirements for homeschoolers has never really made sense to me (neither have absences, latenesses, or grades for that matter). Learning is constant. It's everywhere and in everything. It's not just the workbooks and programs.
Work until we're done. They have the lessons they need to finish that day. They're done when those lessons are done. If we don't finish a book by June, we will probably work on it over the summer. If we finish early, I need to decide if we're done, or if I want to start something else. For example, if we finish the math book a few weeks early, we'll be done with math. But if we finish it several months early, we'll take a week break from math and then move on. Since my dh is a public school teacher, our schedule follows the public school, more or less. We've found that to be much easier for us!
I kind of scheduled and kind of wong it this year, mostly write up a list for what to do each day/week/sometimes month. We try to do a lesson a day in each class, some we have to do more some less. My kid is older though so time is relative.
I'm probably the strictest scheduler! But both my kids and I do better when we know exactly what's expected and when, etc. I start by looking at our unit of history, count how many "school" days that I expect the unit to last - which is usually 4 weeks or 20 days. Then, I break down the reading and the projects into those 20 days. Then I take the historical fiction that goes with that chapter and break down how much they need to read each day to be finished at the same time. I take a look at our chapter for Character Training and spread it out over those 20 days, add in the memory verse, the verse & character test day, etc. (this USUALLY ends up being and every other day thing except for the bible reading). Then, I add in the "everyday" subjects...EVERYDAY! LOL Math, grammar, writing, spelling, current events (which is reading an article in an age appropriate current events magazine). Now, my oldest adds in anything she has from outside classes (a Science class, and several co-op classes). For my oldest, she uses the guideline of what needs to be accomplished every week....so as long as she's done the whole week by Friday, no matter how she's done it, it's done. This means she may do all her grammar and writing one day, all her math the next, all her history the next, etc, etc. She adds in art of some sort everyday since that is her "release" and relaxation. My middle follows the schedule to the strictest of the sense....in order...one subject at a time! LOL My youngest does a combination. Some days she's really motivated, some days she's not. I kind of let her "wing it" as long as she works on something each day - she's only in 1st grade, so....
The Sonlight material is scheduled out for 36 weeks. For the rest of our subjects I plan it out for any where between 30-36 weeks 4x a week. I have a master "schedule" and then each weekend I just check off what we did the past week and write up a weekly plan sheet. If I did not do this I would never finish our curriculums.
I'm schooling Other People's Kids, so they are used to and have come to expect a year to be 36 weeks beginning in August and going through May. Most of the curriculum materials I use are scheduled out pretty much that way, although some can be gotten through faster and some we have to kind of squeeze to get it all done. With most (all?) subjects, if we get done early by a couple of weeks or so, we're just done. And if we don't get done, there's not much I can do about it. If we're way not done, and the kid is coming back the next year we'll just pick it up where we left off in August before starting the next course of that subject.
We hs year around and the kids just move at the pace that works for them. IOW, one may work at one pace for mastery but it will be a different pace for the other. I don't schedule a certain amount to be done every day, just a certain amount of time to be spent on the subject. I.e. math, 1 hr, reading, 1/2 hr, etc. This is because they will then feel that they can spend as much time as they have to in order to master a concept rather than just try to get through it (as mine tend to do!) I don't have a beginning or an ending to the school year. We just take breaks during the school year and follow the syllabus for each curriculum until we get through it. One of the issues is that my younger dd (10) has ADD as well as dyslexia and dysgraphia. It can take her an inordinate amount of time for some of the simple tasks. My older (13) likes to do several days worth of a subject in one sitting because she doesn't like to set it up and put it away every day. I think you have to look at how your student works best (independently or with supervision) within certain curriculums and how you teach best. Now this is completely different with science and some of the math!:lol: HTH's Kim
I like that schedule of 8 weeks in November December, and May to July. I just may have to use that.....
Schedule? I'm supposed to have one? Just kidding. I actually look at our monthly schedule, figure out what days we are going to be home for a block of time, and schedule lessons into those blocks. We complete whatever we can in those amounts of time, moving as slowly or quickly as needed. It's pretty relaxed, but it works well for us.
Oh, and on a daily basis, I just put up on a board what everybody should do in each subject that day, and they're free to choose what to do when, for the most part.
