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Becca
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| Posted: May 28 2013 at 6:33pm | IP Logged
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In your house?
I'd love to compare mine to it. I'm always trying to find a better schedule/flow for the day. I constantly feel like I'm running around my house all.day.long!
I'd especially love to hear it if you are teaching 3 or more. Thanks!
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 29 2013 at 2:29pm | IP Logged
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Hi Becca --
Well, I don't know that my "typical" day will help you that much -- I do have three children currently schooling at home, and have had four, but I don't have the number of younger children that you have, which makes things *somewhat* easier, logistically, than if I were having to keep lots of balls in the air at once. And it's been a long time since I had babies and toddlers, so long that I tend to forget what that's like, as a reality in my homeschooling day. At this stage, my kids at home are 15, 10, and 9. SO, that said:
For some time now, we've run on a very gentle and broad routine -- note that I don't say "schedule," because that implies things starting and stopping at definite times, which does not happen in my house -- consisting of three basic blocks:
1) read-aloud books/combined lessons. Jen Mackintosh calls this the Morning Basket -- I just call it the Basket, because these days it tends to move around some in the routine. Sometimes we start the day with it; sometimes it's what we do over lunch. Sometimes it's the only thing we do. Daily we read about four books, in short segments and in rotation, so that we have Monday-Wednesday-Friday books and Tuesday-Thursday books. This way I cover history, geography, religion, science/nature, literature, art, and, this past year, math as well. This is when we're most likely to do narrations, and it's when we have discussions.
When my older children were younger, we did this with little kids playing in the same room (and sometimes contributing to the conversation), and it was really everybody. Now my 10th grader is on his own schedule entirely, so he's not part of basket time -- most days he goes in to campus with my college-professor husband and does his own work in between classes he takes, so basket time (and everything else) is just the 9- and 10-year-olds and me. But it has worked for a pretty wide age spread: I've had a 13-year-old, a 9-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 3-year-old all together for basket, with good, if slightly chaotic, results. Those were my favorite homeschooling days, actually . . .
Anyway . . .
2) "table work" -- any written activity, i.e. copywork, grammar, math. I try to keep this the shortest part of the school day. Kids who are able work independently. This year for the first time, that really happened across the board, and I found I was able largely to hover in case there were questions, rather than having to hop from child to child and think of what one child could be doing while he waited for me to finish with another. That's always a challenge -- to have things at hand for a child to do, who really can't get through something, but you don't want him to run off someplace before you get finished with someone else. In the past I've found it helpful to stagger copywork -- in other words, to have one child busy copying a passage (which really doesn't ever need much guidance from me) while I work on math, say, with another child. That has helped me to cut down on the "Just a minute! Just a minute! Let me finish helping your sister!" dynamic, which starts to drive me crazy very quickly. *Patience* is such a hard virtue to work on! For all of us!
I also let older kids (middle/high school) take their work to their rooms or some other private, quiet place where they can get on with it. My M.O. when I had everyone home and my youngers were really young, was to concentrate on younger kids while older kids worked on their own, and then to use naptimes to check in with the olders and work on things that we needed to work on together.
Overall, I try to keep our table work simple. Typically we don't do things like spelling or vocabulary or "reading comprehension"; we do maybe 5 minutes of grammar daily and, when I don't have people combined for math, roughly 20 minutes of math for kids younger than about 5th grade. For older kids, I have also often gravitated towards self-teaching materials, or programs with a DVD lesson component, to minimize the need for me to *teach* a subject to an older child, in a subject like math, where the book alone might not necessarily be a sufficient teacher (for example, my 15-year-old more or less taught himself the entire Saxon Algebra 1/2 book in 7th grade, using Khan Academy videos to help him over rough patches). I really do push my older kids to be independent and proactive learners, with me as a conversation partner and facilitator, rather than outright teacher.
3) independent reading in all subject areas. Again, each child has Monday-Wednesday-Friday books and Tuesday-Thursday books in his/her school bin, and they quickly get into the rhythm of the week and know which books to pull out. This year, too, I finally have all fluent readers in my house, which makes this time very quiet and pleasant! In the past, fluent readers have read to themselves while I worked on reading with non-fluent readers. I haven't had older kids reading with youngers so much, but that's another way to handle this time if you have multiple non-fluent readers who need to practice. In the past, too, when I've had really littles, I'd let the older kids find quiet places to read and just leave them alone while the little kids played. Again, reading times vary depending on age and ability, but typically, once reading is done, the formal school day is over for that child.
As I'm writing this, it all seems kind of vague to me (and I keep thinking, "IS this really what I do??"), and I'm not sure I'm addressing your concern. When you say you're running around your house all day long, do you mean you're interrupted a lot in your working with a particular child, to tend to younger children? Do you mean that it feels to you that your school day has too many moving parts, ie too many children going in too many different directions, doing too many different things for you to attend to as you would like? I think probably at least some of that feeling of needing to bi- or tri-locate is just a function of having lots of littles whom you can't turn your back on much. But it can also be a function of a schedule where you're expected to *teach* a lot of different levels separately, and there aren't enough hours in the day to accommodate that need. Or . . . it could be a function of any of a number of other things. Maybe say a little more about the particular details of your day as it is right now, and more folks will jump in to brainstorm with you.
Meanwhile, I hope this was somewhat helpful!
Sally (that other mom with an Ada!)
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Becca
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| Posted: May 30 2013 at 12:55pm | IP Logged
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Sorry I didn't have more details in my post, I was writing it on my phone and trying to write it quickly.
Our problem is all the distractions. We also don't seem to start until 10:30 or later between farm chores, breakfast, everyone getting dressed/washed up. Then by the time everyone is focusing we have to have lunch. After lunch no one seems to regain focus. I've tried to do nap/quiet time but it doesn't really work. My 9 month old twins are crawling (and are starting to stand up) and getting into everything. I'm still nursing them also. Then there is the piles of laundry and cleaning all the messes (including all the diapers!). People also stop by our house sometimes to buy something or friends/family just saying hi.My hubby comes home during the day sometimes too. Our neighbor kids will come over after school asking to play every day. My kids have also got in the habit of yelling for me when they need something.
My oldest does great working independently and I don't except my 6yo to do any work without me. My 9 year old twins and 8 year old are somewhere in between. They have finished their grade level math (I started them on the next level - It's teaching textbooks). They are almost finished with science because they loved it. They have also done a decent amount of reading but not very much output work. They only got half way through latin and grammar/writing has 13 more lessons left (you do 2-3 lessons a week).
I'm thinking I'm just going to stop for the year. Pick out some different curriculum choices and start a better routine when we get started again. I hope this made some sense. It took me an hour to write it between the interruptions and I started rambling. 
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 30 2013 at 2:18pm | IP Logged
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No, made perfect sense. And I think you're right, a break to refresh and regroup sounds in order. I'd also say you made pretty good headway this year, from your description.
Some thoughts -- and mind you, I really don't mean this as advice. I don't have your life, I don't have your kids, and I'm really uncomfortable suggesting things for people to do, particularly because if you could see the disorganization of my own life . . . well. These are just some thoughts, and take them or leave them for what they're worth.
* It sounds as though you basically have a window of time between 10:30 a.m. and the time neighbor kids come home and want to play. (and for what it's worth, even without a farm, that's often our window too. Not early school-doers around here!) It's not a totally interruption-free window, but it's a window you might work with.
* You have one child working very independently -- yay! And three more who can at least function without your constant presence -- also yay! Of course, on the other end, you have to be watching your littles, so you're not exactly coasting along, but to have four kids up and running to at least some degree with independent work is a real bonus.
* So, your window of time. I'm assuming that pre-10:30 what you're doing is waking up, farm chores, breakfast, maybe some household chores? I don't know whether there's any way to streamline that time, so that you have everyone READY to go by 10:30, but it seems to me that that might be a goal. Don't make it any earlier than 10:30, because that's your time, but maybe work on conditioning everyone to put out their clothes for the next day the night before, having hairbrushes, toothbrushes, etc, ready to use, something fairly quick and grabbable for breakfast . . . whatever it takes not to have 10:30 be the time when everyone's going, "Aaaaah, where's my . . . whatever???" (In my house, pencils mysteriously evaporate into thin air about that time every day, so I'm tempted to say, AND CORRAL ALL THE PENCILS, TOO!)
* During your 10:30-lunchtime window, your oldest can be working on her own, or she can perhaps spend some of that time helping you with younger kids, who would totally finish by lunchtime. Then whether they're napping or not in the aft, she could have a good two to three-hour window before the neighbor kids get home to finish her work.
* I would think that you'd want to concentrate on seatwork like math, writing, and for the youngest schoolers, reading instruction, during that window -- all the core-skills type of stuff. My own MO would be to start with the child who needs the most attention and run through that child's whole complement of work -- generally with 6-year-olds I've done no more than a 5-10 minute lesson for each basic subject, so that child can be done fairly quickly.
I've found it helpful, when I have to turn my attention to one child, to give any other children *reading* to do, usually in a free-choice format (I have a rack and a couple of bins of "pick-me-up" books, which I change out periodically). I find it really un-helpful to have two children doing, say, math at two different levels at the same moment, because that is when you get duelling crises -- "MOM! HELP! NOW!" But if at the beginning of the year I lay out that this is what's going to happen -- X is going to do table work first, and Y is going to read until X is finished, at which point Y will read (or go play, if Y is too young to read independently) -- and I consistently guide Y into that routine for the first couple of weeks of the new year, then it does fairly quickly become the MO.
Alternatively, you could have your oldest on hand as tutor for one or more of the younger ones, just to get you through maybe an hour when all of them are working at the same time. OR she could have a little home-economics/Life Management Skills time during which she does a load of laundry before settling down to her work. We've done that one many times over, with the result that all my kids now are pretty competent at most household chores! Maybe everyone should have a "Life Management Skills" slot during the morning -- 20 minutes, maybe -- with a job like dusting, mopping, dishes, baby-watching, whatever. That's another way to have somebody busy while you're working on academic work with another.
So for each child, you might plan a routine that goes:
Child Y
1) Read while Mom works with X
2) Math/writing with Mom
3) Chore of the week
Child Z
1) Chore of the week
2) Read while Mom works with Y
3) Math/writing with Mom
And so on. I would keep it really simple, and I would not assign times for each of these activities -- just start #1 at 10:30 and do it until it's time for #2.
* Use mealtimes, especially lunch, as "pegs" for combined read-alouds and other school activities. Lunch is when we often do our "basket" reading, including our Life of Fred math (we have a tiled kitchen table, and we write on it in dry-erase while we're eating). I try to poke down something before I call the kids for lunch, so that I'm free to read aloud to them while they eat. We also listen to audiobooks at lunch. With babies and littles it can be hard to do this without interruptions, but it's worth trying -- maybe feed the babies first, or, if you nurse at lunchtime, use that as a way to occupy babies while you have an audiobook on. This way at least you've pushed your window of learning opportunity through lunch, even if it's kind of a bust afterwards. After lunch I'd call the younger kids finished, though I would expect a 7th grader to have roughly a four-hour day and be willing to work in the afternoon.
*In terms of curriculum choices, it sounds as though simple and streamlined is what you're looking for, though it also sounds as though things are fairly streamlined already? At our house, we cover a great deal of ground through literature, both read aloud and read independently. We have done some CHC workbook grammar, but our "language arts" has mostly consisted of copywork and dictation. After some wandering in the foreign-language wilderness, we've settled into learning German, using a free online (and very self-teaching) program called Duolingo, which my kids do as part of their tablework time. If Latin is a struggle, you might consider ditching it for the time being and picking up a modern language the kids can work on on the computer without a lot of oversight from you. Alternatively, and maybe you've done it this way already (?), use a mealtime for a quick Latin lesson with everyone.
*Finally, to the extent that you can, try to guard your window of work time from outside interruptions -- though I know you can't predict when people are going to come and buy things! Also, I know all too well that people assume that because you're homeschooling, you don't have any kind of real schedule, and you aren't really doing anything that can't be interrupted . . . Members of my family like to call me at 11:00 in the morning, for example, and I've just taken to not answering the phone. My kids go nuts every. single. time. it rings -- "Mom! The phone! Mom, should I get the phone?" -- and I have to resettle them, but that's still better than *my* being pulled out of our learning time for an hour's conversation about nothing that, nine times out of ten, can't wait till later. I have to model for the kids that what we're doing does actually matter, and that it's going to be done NOW, not later -- I find that maintaining my own focus really helps them as well. Dad coming home (or being home) during school time also makes it seem like insta-vacation . . . still working on that one.
Anyway, I do think that part of our job is to protect the boundaries of our school time, even when it's basically really loose, as mine is. Even if it's only an hour or so (and until my kids are into middle school, two hours is about our maximum formal-school time), it's time dedicated to us and to our work together -- I don't take phone calls, and I communicate as politely as I can to friends that I'm glad to see them *after one o'clock*. I used to be much, much laxer about this kind of thing than I am now -- if we had an outside activity starting at noon, for example, the day of that activity would very quickly become a Day of No Schoolwork. But I got tired of having our time eroded like that, so I did come up with reduced/condensed schedules for those days when our time has a definite and relatively early cut-off, so that we now don't ever (or we very rarely) have a No-Schoolwork Day. Anything to keep us in the road!
Again, none of this is advice, and I'm not offering it from a place of having figured it all out. I'm just trying to think myself into your shoes a little, but honestly, I know how easy it is to strategize about somebody else's life from the outside, and how hard it is actually to live that life and combat its challenges! It's so easy for me to sit here, with no babies, with fewer children at home, with things so much less stressed in so many ways these days, and attempt to solve your dilemmas for you -- and I'm probably saying nothing you haven't thought about or tried. At least you know you're not alone with it all!
Hang in there, and have a lovely, refreshing, renewing summer.
Sally
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Becca
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| Posted: May 30 2013 at 3:13pm | IP Logged
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Thank you for all of your advice! Really it is helpful, the family read-aloud at lunch sounds like a great idea (that I've never thought of) and there were several other that were great suggestions a few I've thought of but it's good to hear from someone else if you know what I mean!  I need to get more organized and actually write down a routine and even include some chores. I'm not very consistent, but I think it would help if I hung it up somewhere to follow. I could also use it as a reference for my kids if they ask me what they are suppose to be doing (which they do a lot!) and just tell them to look at the schedule. 
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4Real Forums : Planning and Ordering our Days
Topic: What is a "typical" school day..
