I am trying to put together a checklist for the kids to follow so we get all their work done without me hounding on them. A little background: We are super busy with a business ran out of our home, and the 3 kids!! My week isn't always the same. Some weeks we are delivering things 3 days in a row, and then we go 3 weeks without leaving the house. Some weeks we do school M-Th. Other weeks we do school Tues, Wed, 1/2 day on Friday, and sat. etc. So the days are not the same, and even though I try to get 4 days a week in there we do not always make it. If my world was perfect I would be able to make a list and say on Monday do zxc, on Tuesday do xcv, etc. But I can't because it is very likely we will skip Mondays for 3 weeks and hit Sat twice. So I was thinking about saying twice a week do Latin, one section of history a week etc. But my kids are little and I am not thinking they can figure that out without it being a hassle for me. Any ideas? I was just going to use an excel spreadsheet and put it in their notebooks to keep track of. I thought they could use x's or something, and let me sign off when they were done for the day. My point in doing this is that I need to get more organized, and there are times I have to answer the phone and they sit there and stare at me instead of doing work because they don't know what to do ( well they say they don't, I think they should)
I know how life can be busy with 3 children. I don't have a home business but I do quite a bit of volunteering. What has helped me at the second half of our school year was to devote a certain time each day to just schooling the kids. It's hard when my parents call or daddy but for the most part I keep myself off the computer (still not easy) and let the answering machine pick up the calls. I tend to make all of our appts for after Noon so we have the mornings for schooling. I have Excel and have a schedule sorta filled out. I have MOTH since I had planned on having a handful of children and use their layout for my schedule. It has helped when I have followed it. I have my master, a calendar which a color for each child and a check off sheet in their folder. it works for us as long as I stay focus which I unfortally tend not to.
Can you create a schedule that is undated with 4 days on it? Subjects down one side, maybe "Day 1, Day 2, etc" across the top. Then schedule out those 4 days and have the kids just X off or write a line through when they finish something? That way, it's not specific to a DAY or DATE but, "This is what needs to be accomplished this week" type of thing? HTH.
I was thinking about the same as Krista, only maybe with 6 or 8 days across the top (8 would cover two weeks' worth). Subjects down the side, check off as each thing is done... Maybe jot down the date that "day 1" turns out to be in that box, and the date of "day 2" whenever that turns out to be, and so on.
For my youngest, I am planning on making a magnetic dry erase board- type planner. I will turn it vertically and put a line down the center...left side heading: to do today. right side: completed...I am going to print slips of paper labeled with each subject title; "math" "Latin" etc. Then, laminate them and attach a magnet to the back. Each day, I will put up the subjects he is responsible for, and he can move them to the opposite side when finished... Since it's dry-erase, there will be space (depending on size of board you use) to write a description of the lesson if you choose. The magnetic part is not necessary, but I thought it would be a nice 'hands on" touch...and colorful, if you print each subject on a different color! Have fun!
I put the kids together a schedule using Excel spreadsheets based on a five day week rotation. Like kbabe1968, is used Day 1, Day 2, etc. instead of days of the week. We'll just work through the days, no matter when they fall. The kids have spots to check out what they have done, so if they don't do everything one day, they can do extra the next to make up missed work. I don't see why it won't work.
I like those ideas, I think I am going to try to do the generic days, that would let us mark off what needs to be done, and I can see what needs to be caught back up, so we don't end up like we did this year with 6 weeks of Grammar left to finish in 3 weeks. :/ WE had a dry erase board, my LO 2 yo kept erasing the lessons before we finished. He is the same size as my #2 and if she can reach it so can he. AHHH I am going to have a test month with it next month and see what I need to tweak for our new year starting in late Aug. Thank Ladies!
we didn't do the checklist thing, but I did switch to undated days this past year as well. I think what helped me was that if something happened and I got totally off track, I didn't feel the intense NEED to suddenly cram 3 days worth of work (or more) into one so that we could be back 'on schedule'. I'm sure that's a newbie thing , but was making me really obsessive... and I felt really pressured... which means my kids felt the pressure, too... not really a learning atmosphere at all. The other thing I did this past year, and which I will be doing in the fall, is to make a pat list of basics I want to cover each month. Sort of... a cheatsheet. This was far more important than the daily stuff. It tended to have more reasonable expectations, and it was easy to see where we were heading. I had to CONSTANTLY remind myself that the kids were learning far more than they would have in ps, but I felt like I just wasn't covering enough info. Back to the monthly list.. and a deep breath. Some months we got to dip into the following month's subjects but I didn't feel obligated. Not sure if that will help you with your daily checklists, but thought I'd add it since it was a lifesaver for us.
