38

AND JUST WHEN DO I DO ALL THIS? SCHEDULES FOR HOME SCHOOLERS

To choose time is to save time.

—Francis Bacon

Home education is a family commitment. We’ve noticed that in many families the entire responsibility for teaching the kids is shifted to one overworked parent. If one parent works full-time while the other teaches, that’s a fine arrangement. But the job of planning lessons, investigating curricula, taking trips, reviewing progress, going to conventions, and generally talking about what goes on in home school needs to be shared by both parents.

Life is made up of hard but rewarding choices. It isn’t possible for both parents to pursue demanding full-time careers while home-educating. Flex-time, part-time, or semester-oriented jobs (like teaching) can be worked around home schooling. A full-time criminal lawyer and a practicing obstetrician, married to each other, won’t be able to manage.

We know of families that home-educate almost entirely in the evenings because of job schedules; we know of families that do school in the summer because the parents teach during the school year; we know families with home businesses and telecommuting jobs who set up school right in the home office and do it, on and off, throughout the day; we know single parents who home-school when they’re not working. Although it takes organization, energy, and determination, combining home school with work can be done. And if you’re able to do this, the child will be involved in a great part of your life—and you in his.

Susan and her husband, Peter, both work at home. Susan also teaches at the university during the school year. In the mornings, Peter works while Susan does grammar, writing and spelling, and history or science with the boys. At 2:00 P.M., they swap shifts, Susan goes to work, and Peter does math with the boys and takes them to appointments (swimming, doctor’s visits, grocery store). Art and music fit into the evenings and weekends. Sundays and Mondays are family days for housework, museums, zoo visits, worship, and doing nothing.

An important, sanity-preserving part of every home-school day ought to be the “afternoon nap.” Jessie scheduled an afternoon nap for all three of her children up until the time they finished high school. For two hours, everyone went to his or her room and pursued a quiet activity alone, while Jessie put her feet up. Bedtime was also strictly enforced—no one went wandering through the house after the lights were off.

Susan, following the same principles, had her preschoolers go from taking naps to a two-hour rest period, even though they stopped sleeping. The boys had toys, coloring books, other books, and tape recorders with good books on tape to listen to. If they got out of bed (except to go to the bathroom, of course), they lost a privilege (like the tape recorder). They’ve never gotten accustomed to skipping the nap; it’s a regular part of every day. Susan keeps certain books, tapes, and craft supplies just for naptime use. This middle-of-the-day break period is necessary for everyone. The children need it after studying hard all morning; the baby needs it; and parents certainly need the chance to sit down, rest, have a cup of coffee, and catch up on business. The boys also go to bed early—between 8:00 and 8:30—and are allowed to have lights on for an hour for quiet reading and play before going to sleep.

Home-educating parents like their children’s company. They don’t want to send the kids off for most of every day. But they need a break in the middle of the day, someone to share the job of teaching, and quiet evenings. And in terms of parental sanity, the younger the children, the more important these rest times and early bedtimes.

HOW MUCH TIME DOES IT TAKE?

After having taught in a classroom, Jessie found that she could accomplish as much instructing—and a great deal more one-on-one interacting—in less time at home. The children didn’t spend time on a bus or in lines. And with immediate detection of errors and on-the-spot correction, instruction time is more efficient and progress is faster.

For kindergarten, intensive instruction in reading, writing, and math can be done in about an hour, gradually increasing to five to six hours per day in high school. If the foundations are properly laid in basic reading, writing, spelling, and math, the student becomes more independent and less in need of direct instruction.

Jessie found that by high school, her role became one of “chief of accountability” and encourager. She helped her high-school children keep in mind their long-range goals (college) as well as their daily and weekly goals. Education took place continually, not just in a “sit at the desk” format. Discussion occurred around the table, during snacks and meals. We listened to tapes and had conversations in the car, going to the library or to music lessons or on field trips. We played classical music while cleaning. Books were everywhere in the house (we took the TV out). The children read all the time—while waiting, in the car, at bedtime, during rest periods. And while she polished shoes, Susan even read the newspaper that was under them.

As the children got older, Jessie taught them how to prepare meals. In the beginning, this was time-consuming; but when Susan was thirteen, she asked, and was permitted, to prepare a full-course dinner for an extended family birthday celebration (Jessie has pictures of a very tired but accomplished cook). In his teens, Susan’s brother, Bob, hand-kneaded and made all the family bread. Her sister, Deborah, became the expert pie baker and did much of the general cooking. These are not only time-savers for the parent-teacher, but life skills that have been mastered by the children.

Jessie still remembers her surprise when a group of Susan’s college friends came home for the weekend. One girl didn’t even know how to break lettuce and make a salad. She was a good student, with a traditional institutional education, but had never been allowed in the kitchen.

Read through time-management books for hints, both corporate (how to handle paperwork) and domestic (freedom from unnecessary housework). We’ve listed Jessie’s favorites in Chapter 38.

Douglas Wilson, founder of a national classical-school organization, writes that education “is the process of selling someone on books.”1 The home-schooling parent must make time for reading. Read at night, at lunch, in the bathroom, while waiting, and whenever else you can squeeze in the time. Turn off the TV, and reclaim those hours.

YEARLY PLANNING

There’s no particular reason why you should home-school every day for nine months and then take the summer off. The children burn out during the year and get bored (and forget all their math) over the long summer break. We advise going year round, taking vacations throughout the year.

Here are plans that are time-equivalent to the traditional nine-month school year. You can adjust your time off for family vacations, company, illness, a new baby, or whatever else you have planned.

Option 1

School

September, October, November

Break

December

School

January, February, March

Break

April

School

May, June, July

Break

August

Option 2

School for three weeks and break for one week, year round.

Option 3

Adjust breaks around holidays and times when everyone is growing tired of school.

School

September through mid-October

Break

Week off

School

Late October until Thanksgiving

Break

Week off

School

Early December

Break

Three weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s

School

Mid-January until late February or early March

Break

Two weeks (Everyone gets tired of school by late February!)

School

March, April

Break

Two weeks off

School

Late April, May, on through summer

Breaks

Anytime during the summer, whenever you’re vacationing, visiting, entertaining, etc.

For each year, set goals (“Finish the whole math book,” “Read through the Renaissance in history,” “Teach my five year old to read”). Then, as you divide your year into monthly, weekly, and daily segments, ask: What am I doing to achieve this goal? Be specific. The math book is divided into daily lessons; you need to do 140 days of math to finish the book. Your school year is nine months long, and you have 200 history pages to cover; that’s around 22 pages per month or 6 pages per week. In ten minutes per day of phonics, the five year old can learn to read.

Set goals for each subject, and chart out the pace you would like to keep. If you’re using a textbook, you can divide the number of pages by the number of days or weeks you plan to study. Write down the master plan. You can accelerate or slow down as you progress, but you have this general guide to keep you on target. You may want to have a master-plan notebook to record goals for each subject; checking periodically will give you a feeling for the progress you’ve made. Also, there are courses, like Saxon Math, that have daily plans for you. Try to follow whatever plan you choose, but be flexible. If the child needs to work more slowly or wants to work faster, accommodate him.

With the older child who is studying more independently, check on his progress weekly. When Susan was in eighth grade, she was generally responsible and studied hard, so Jessie didn’t check on her progress in accounting for several months. By the time Jessie did check, Susan was far behind; since she was doing the course by correspondence, she had a huge amount of work to do to catch up.

In spring—preferably by June—read through the next year’s suggested work, write and call for information, and try to place orders. The earlier you order books, the quicker they’ll arrive. Remember that since by midsummer everyone’s buying books, you can expect a six-to eight-week delay in the processing of your order.

In his book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, Alan Lakein suggests setting A, B, and C priorities. Do the A’s first, the B’s next, and let the C’s fall off your schedule, if you don’t have time for them.2

WEEKLY PLANNING

Many home schoolers are able to accomplish in four days what would normally take five days in a classroom setting. The fifth day can be used for library trips, tutoring, lessons, field trips, or other “off-campus” learning. Jessie did four-day school weeks and was still able to take off three months every year; she also took a week off in October and February, when everyone was feeling stressed. If she could do it over again, she would follow Option 3 given earlier, but she says, “I wasn’t courageous enough to break out of the school mold!”

We sometimes found it less crowded and more convenient to take “Saturday trips” during the week, when most other children are in school, and to use Saturday as a school day.

Start the year with a disciplined approach, following a preplanned, written schedule. If the plan is too strenuous, you can adjust and ease up, which is much easier than starting out with a relaxed approach and then finding that you are not accomplishing your goals or that your child is becoming lazy.

Don’t panic about illness or doctors’ appointments. The child would miss those days from school anyway. And Jessie found that a bored, mildly sick or recovering child welcomed “something to do.” If there was no TV allowed, he continued to do some schoolwork.

Don’t be upset over unavoidable interruptions. Remember, schools have interruptions, too: the teacher is sick and the substitute doesn’t follow her lesson plan; weather or mechanical problems close down the school; violence or lack of discipline sometimes disrupts teaching; strikes or political demonstrations interfere with instruction. In the midst of interruptions, teach children to be flexible. And don’t worry about your child lagging behind the rest of the class. Simply take up where you left off.

Jessie’s Weekly Schedule

4 days

“In-house” teaching

1 day

“Off-campus” learning—library, tutoring, lessons, short trips

1 day

Major projects (household, yard, shopping) or family trips

1 day

Rest, worship, relaxation

DAILY PLANNING

Plan a schedule for daily life, and stick to it. If you can, go to bed early and get up early—mind and body are fresher in the morning. Get up at the same time every day.

Plan how much time you’ll spend on each lesson. Always leave some “wiggle room” by scheduling in a little more time than you think you’ll need. Schedules reduce indecision and arguing because everyone knows what to do and is able to get on with the job at hand.

Have a specific time each day for each class, and try to keep to this. Math, spelling, and writing are skills that need daily practice and feedback in a predictable routine.

Be flexible. Schedules will change as children grow. And a new baby or suddenly mobile toddler can wreck the most carefully put-together schedule. You have the freedom to change activities around. If a small child becomes interested in earthworms, you’d still do basic skills—phonics, reading, writing, math—every day, but you might not do history for a week while he learns about earthworms. A high-school student might suddenly develop an interest in some research project. You should keep up with the daily lesson in math because it’s an incremental skill. But he can spend a week on just history or just science and catch up on his other work later. The key is the intentional use of flexibility for an educational goal, rather than allowing students to do what they “feel like” doing.

Write down all family activities on a chart. Once a week, we filled out a wall chart that had a column for each member of the family. On it were the unchangeables: outside work, appointments, deadlines for lessons or hobbies, meetings. If Mom and Dad were taking a child to a recital, that went on all three columns (Mom’s, Dad’s, and the child’s). Then we scheduled school lessons, meals, naps, practices, chores, housework, and free time. This way, Jessie could assign subjects with an eye to her availability: Susan didn’t need help practicing the piano, but Bob needed help with grammar, so Mom put Bob’s grammar lesson on her schedule at the same time Susan practiced.

JESSIE’S METHOD OF ORGANIZING: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

I started with a 3 × 5-inch notebook to carry in my purse, but soon I needed more space. I went to the 5 × 8-inch size, which is the size of many daily business organizers available at office-supply stores. Calendars, paper, and plastic zip cases are easy to find for this size.

I put a plastic zip case containing a 21/2 × 4-inch pocket calculator in the front of this notebook (handy for figuring shopping bargains).

I kept a Month At-A-Glance, tabbed, yearly planning calendar just behind the plastic zip case. All appointments, meetings, birthdays, deadlines, holiday celebrations, and so forth were kept in here, colored with highlighters.

I bought a set of blank 5 × 8-inch notebook dividers and made the following personal divisions in the notebook:

Daily Plan Here I put in blank sheets of paper, each one dated at the top, and outlined the family activities for that day. I kept a week ahead and threw sheets away as I transferred unfinished items to the next page. I kept one page separate and wrote a list of large projects to plan for.

Shop In this division, I kept current shopping lists (except the grocery list, which I kept on the refrigerator until grocery day). Clothes, hardware, office supplies—all this was available whenever we shopped or had the chance to run into a store.

Household Information Here I kept all the notes useful for running the household: printer and typewriter model numbers, sizes of household items (like the dining-room table’s dimensions for tablecloth shopping), paint shades, appliance model numbers.

Clothes I kept current sizes of all family members here and their current needs in case I saw a sale.

Business Here I kept Social Security numbers of family members, contents of the safety deposit boxes, frequently used phone numbers, account numbers, and so forth.

Books I kept a running list of books, videos, tapes, and music to look for at libraries, stores, and sales.

Directions Because we live out in the country, I kept a typed-up set of directions to the house so that service companies could find us. (You might not want to do this for security reasons.)

Gifts Here I jotted down ideas for gifts for all family members.

Miscellaneous Notes Just what it sounds like—recipes I read in magazines at the doctor’s office, notes about people I met, addresses, things to think about.

Make your own personal dividers according to the information you need at your fingertips. I was never able to buy a preprinted plan book that could satisfy my needs.

GOOD USE OF TIME

Read in the evenings, instead of watching TV.

For once-a-week family entertainment, go to the public library together instead of to the mall or movies. Read books together; go to evening story time with younger children; check out CDs and books. Get all the books for the next week’s study.

Take control of the telephone. Take it off the hook, turn off the ringer, get an answering machine—but don’t answer it when you’re home schooling. And tell family and frequent callers not to call when you’re teaching. Jessie’s father had a long and serious illness at one point when the children were still studying; she put in a second line and gave that number only to family.

Limit outside commitments. You don’t have to meet all personal goals while you are home educating your children. As a family, discuss, decide, and keep in mind your long-term goals. Balance other responsibilities with these goals.

Simplify life. Jessie’s lifestyle while home educating didn’t require formal entertainment. So she put away silver that needed polishing, chose not to buy clothes that required special care, put time-consuming hobbies on hold. Instead of entertaining, the family shared meals with friends.

Try to set aside a place for learning, not playing. If you don’t have a separate room, the kitchen table is fine. When you get ready to do school, clear off the table. Don’t allow toys or other distracting objects to co-exist with the books and papers.

Remember that everything costs either money, time, or energy, all of which are in limited supply. If you have more money than time or energy, buy your teaching aids. If you have more time and energy, make them.

HOME SCHOOLING WITH BABIES AND TODDLERS

Try these ideas to keep babies and toddlers occupied:

SCHEDULES FOR HOME SCHOOLERS

At the beginning of every school year, we make out a schedule. We adhere slavishly to it for about two weeks—and then we loosen up.

You must have a schedule to start with. You need some idea of how much time each subject should take, how often to take breaks, when to start, when to stop. But once you’ve worked with your child for several weeks, you’ll know how to adjust the schedule to suit yourself. You’ll find that math may take less time and grammar more time than scheduled (or vice versa). You’ll discover that your child can do certain tasks on his own, allowing you to rearrange the schedule so that these tasks coincide with putting the baby to bed or making phone calls. Or, if you’re a working parent, you’ll change the schedule so that the child is schooled when you’re there.

Make sure that evenings are free to do some schoolwork and reading since the student doesn’t have “homework” in addition to his regular study.

One Family’s Schedule

Susan and her family have a master “week plan” that tells everyone where they need to be on what day (Susan and Peter make a new one at the beginning of every week). They find it easier not to have set times for each subject, since their days are subject to interruption. The children always get up at the same time every day, do chores before school, have a naptime/rest time/play alone period from 1:00 to 3:00 P.M., and go to bed on a regular schedule (7:30 for the todder, 8:00 for the younger children, 8:30 for the almost-teen). Since Peter does a good portion of the home schooling, their lists are divided into two columns; Peter supervises the left-hand side of each page, while Susan does the right-hand subjects. Saturday is a workday, but the family takes Mondays off for recreation.

This schedule reflects the assignments for Christopher (eleven), Benjamin (nine), and Daniel (just turned six, doing some first grade and some kindergarten work, since he’s actually kindergarten age):

Tuesday

 

Christopher

Trumpet

_________

Grammar

_________

 

Math

_________

History

_________

 

Latin Cards

_________

Writing

_________

 

Geography

_________

Reading

_________

 

Science

 

Latin

_________

 

Experiment

_________

Logic

_________

Benjamin

Drum

_________

Grammar

_________

 

Latin Cards

_________

History

_________

 

Spelling

_________

Writing

_________

 

Geography

_________

Reading

_________

 

Science

 

Latin

_________

 

Experiment

_________

Piano

_________

Daniel

Math

_________

Spelling

_________

 

Reading

_________

First Language

 

 

Geography

_________

Lessons

_________

 

 

 

Piano

_________

 

Wednesday

 

Christopher

Trumpet

_________

Writing

_________

 

Math

_________

Latin

_________

 

Latin Cards

_________

Music Theory

_________

 

Spelling

_________

Library

_________

 

Geography

_________

 

 

 

Handwriting

_________

 

 

Benjamin

Drum

_________

Music Theory

_________

 

Math

_________

Reading

_________

 

Latin Cards

_________

Piano

_________

 

Spelling

_________

Library

_________

 

Geography

_________

 

 

 

Handwriting

_________

 

 

Daniel

Math

_________

Spelling

_________

 

Reading

_________

Piano

_________

 

Geography

_________

Library

_________

 

Thursday

 

Christopher

Trumpet

_________

Grammar

_________

 

Spelling

_________

History

_________

 

Latin Cards

_________

Writing

_________

 

Choir

_________

Reading

_________

 

Handwriting

_________

Logic

_________

 

 

 

Piano

_________

Benjamin

Drum

_________

Grammar

_________

 

Math

_________

History

_________

 

Choir

_________

Writing

_________

 

Handwriting

_________

Reading

_________

 

 

 

Spanish

_________

 

 

 

Piano

_________

Daniel

Math

_________

Spelling

_________

 

Choir

_________

First Language

 

 

 

 

Lessons

_________

 

 

 

Spanish

_________

 

Friday

 

Christopher

Trumpet

_________

Grammar

_________

 

Math

_________

History

_________

 

Latin Cards

_________

Writing

_________

 

Piano

_________

Reading

_________

 

Science Reading

_________

Latin

_________

 

 

 

Logic

_________

Benjamin

Drum

_________

Grammar

_________

 

Math

_________

History

_________

 

Latin Cards

_________

Writing

_________

 

Spelling

_________

Reading

_________

 

Science Reading

_________

Latin

_________

 

 

 

Piano

_________

Daniel

Math

_________

Spelling

_________

 

Science Reading

_________

First Language

 

 

 

 

Lessons

_________

 

 

 

Piano

_________

 

Saturday

 

Christopher

Trumpet

_________

Piano

_________

 

Math

_________

Science Report

_________

 

Spelling

_________

Reading

_________

 

Handwriting

_________

Latin

_________

 

 

 

Music Theory

_________

Benjamin

Drum

_________

Grammar

_________

 

Math

_________

Science Report

_________

 

Handwriting

_________

Writing

_________

 

Spelling

_________

Spanish

_________

 

 

 

Music Theory

_________

Daniel

Reading

_________

Science Report

_________

 

Spelling

_________

Spanish

_________

 

 

 

Piano

_________

 

RESOURCES

For publisher and catalog addresses, telephone numbers, and other information, see Sources (Appendix 4). Most books can be obtained from any bookstore or library.

 

Lakein, Alan. How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. New York: Signet, 1989.

A guide to setting priorities for work and home jobs.

McCullough, Bonnie. Bonnie’s Household Organizer: The Essential Guide for Getting Control of Your Home. 2d rev. ed. New York: St. Martin’s, 1983.

Strategies for spending a minimum amount of time on household jobs.

McCullough, Bonnie, and Susan Monson. 401 Ways to Get Your Kids to Work at Home. New York: St. Martin’s, 2003.

Tips for training children to work.