Gearing up for Fall - Our Weekly Scedule

Homeschooling is a dynamic experience and it's subject to change.  But, like all important things in life, it's helpful to have a plan.  Without a plan you'll do a lot of wheel-spinning, and you'll end up feeling frustrated that you didn't find the time for exciting ideas.

Our plan is simply a designated time for learning activities.

It ends up looking something like this:

The yellow areas are study time  The blue areas are weekly outings and the green is SQUIRT. Sustained Quiet Uninterrupted Independent Reading Time.  This is quiet time for everyone in the house and it's from 2pm-3pm every day.

The day starts at 8:30 after breakfast cleanup.  We break for a substantial snack at 10:30 and have lunch at 1:30.

Within this framework, I will build a plan for the specific subjects to be tackled each day.  I'll use my time estimations and goals from my past post to fill in the a rough idea of which subjects on which days.

Do you use a weekly time allocation schedule?

Related posts

• Gearing Up for Fall - Student Assignments: Weekly/...
• Gearing Up for Fall - Organizing the kids
• Gearing Up for Fall - Pacing The Subjects

Gearing Up for Fall - Pacing The Subjects

Once the calendar dates have been established, the next thing I do is examine the goals I have for each subject area.

For example my 8th grader will be studying

• Geometry (Math-U-See,)  
• Modern History (Story of the World,) 
• English Literature I (Reading and Writing through the Classics,)  
• Physics (The Great Courses: Physics and our Universe, How it all works,)  
• as well as other areas of study like Art, Music, Home Economics, Health Ed, and Phys  Ed.

In examining the yearly calendar I have discovered that there are 32 weeks in my formal school year (Sept 10- June 14.)

Each subject has a scope and sequence of material to be covered.  By looking at the amount of material to cover I am able to dole it out evenly throughout the school year.

It ends up working out like this:

• Physics: 60 lectures in the series at 2 per week  gets it done, with 2 weeks of wiggle room.
• Geometry: 30 lessons at one a week, perfect! Leaves 2 weeks for difficult chapters which might take extra practice to master.
• English Lit: I've decided on 8 units which will each take 4 weeks.  32 exactly.
• History/Geography: There are 42 units, each with 2 parts for a total of 84 items to cover.  This means that we have to do History M/W/F. to get through them all - covering 3 parts or 1.5 units per week.

For each subject I write out a list of weekly goals: 32 weeks, 32 goals for each subject.

I don't put them on the calendar yet, though. I keep each subject listed separately and cross of the goals as we complete them.  This prevents a lot of unnecessary erasing on the calendar, and in the children's assignment books.

Now that I have perspective, I  put things into a weekly schedule similar to the kind we had in school, it has which subjects on which days.

• Social Studies - Mon/Wed/Fri  1 hour per day
• Science (Physics) - Tues/Thurs  1 hour per day
• Math -daily 1 hour per day 
• Literature -  daily.   1.5 hours per day - plus reading time.
• Gym - 1.5 hours per week (Saturday)
• Music - 1 hour per day (includes private lesson time)

This schedule gives my 8th grader 24  hours of structured learning time per week.  That's a good foundation, on top of that he'll learn vicariously and read and experience life.  It's shaping up to be a productive year.

How many hours a week does your middle-schooler spend on academics?

Related posts

• Gearing Up for Fall - Student Assignments
• Gearing Up for Fall - Organizing the kids
• Gearing up for Fall - Our Weekly Scedule
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This Summer My Kids Went to Private School

That title got your attention didn't it?

My boys have been home schooled since the beginning and have never attended a formal educational institution.

But, this summer they donned private school uniforms and sat in desks with their classmates for hours on end....while working as background performers on the CBC TV series Mr. D.  If you watch, you may glimpse them  in Gerry D's Grade 5 class and Grade 9 class.

This is nothing like the work they did in the Charles Darwin mini-series where you see them performing roles. Background performers just "flesh out the scene" So even though they're there, but you might not always see them!

I'm not sure what it did for their opinion of school, but it was a great part-time job, and I haven't heard them asking me to register them in "real school" yet!

English Literature : Excellence in Literature (gr 8-12)

We're doing something new this year for our 8th Grade Language Arts course.
Since my 8th grader is also my eldest child, that should come as no surprise -- we get to break new ground together every year.

A dear homeschooling friend of mine used this system with her son last year.  It's called Excellence in Literature, Reading and Writing Through the Classics, by Janice Campbell.  And it's ideal for late logic and rhetoric stage learners.

I'm a science major, and the last English Lit course I took was English 1000, back too long ago to admit.  I always liked English in school, but it has not been my forte as a home school teacher. 

I have struggled over the years with finding a good structure for teaching English, and I'll admit that I haven't worried much about it.  We read.  A lot.  And we talk about books.  My son has done a couple of book reports, but after 1 or 2 of those, it feels like beating a dead horse. 

We're at the point now, though, where I would like him to start doing some structured work in Essay writing and Literary Analysis.  These are big words, but they are concepts that I feel are important to cover well, and to do this I'd like to get a good start on it.

Enter Excellence in Literature.  Oh. My. Goodness.  I can't say enough about this program. I love it.  And I'm so glad I found it when I did.  The timing is perfect.

AND, the best and most wonderful thing about it is that it's laid out for homeschoolers. There are specific tasks for the student and specific tasks for the "writing mentor" that's me...
The course is brilliant.

On top of all that goodness, it's under $30, lasts a whole year, can be used by multiple children and is downloadable so you can get started using it anytime you like! 

If you're looking for literature studies for Junior or Senior High students I urge you to have a serious look at this program. There are 5 levels altogether, perfect for using in grades 8-12.

Related posts:
Books for Excellence in Literature

Gearing Up for Fall - The calendar

I'm gearing up for Fall studies.  This is always an exciting time for me.  Planning is one of the things I enjoy the most about homeschooling.  I like to organize the year, and map out our plan of attack.  I like to chart and schedule and assemble the resources to make my job as smooth sailing as possible.

The first thing I do is plan the calendar.

This year, I'm trying something new.  We're going to do our work in "blocks."  We'll work hard for 4-6 weeks and then take a week off.  This will give us 2 week -long breaks during the first semester.  We'll take our Christmas break and resume a rigorous school schedule in January, again taking a week off every 4-6 weeks for the remainder of the year.  I've got June 14th as our last official day of curriculum studies.  This will leave us with a couple of weeks at the end of June to tie up any loose ends.

The reason I've decided to make this change is that I've often found myself becoming a slave to my schedule and losing steam after a couple of months.  Although kids thrive on routine, I do not.  It bores me.

I'm expecting that the weeks we take off will be a nice shake up in the monotony of the year, giving us a chance to get out for some field trips, catch up on stray bits of assignments, and do things we don't ordinarily have time to do (or things that we feel we have to "squeeze in" so we can attend to our studies.)

Beginning on Monday, I'll be posting  a series of follow-up posts detailing the way I organize our subjects, our selves, and our time.

How do you structure your school year?

Summer....it is time to take a break? or time to delve further?

Many of us who attended public school as children have fond memories of languishing summers free of teachers, schedules and homework.  Today my homeschooling family also has fond summer memories of bike riding, camping, fun at the beach and lazy rainy days spent reading books.

Does this mean that we don't continue our studies through the summer?  It does not.

For us, summer is a time when the rest of our obligations disappear.  No more trips to the violin teacher, no more swimming lessons, no more karate class, no more hustle and bustle.  Our days are our own to carve in whatever way we choose.

Because we love to learn and are creative people this means that we enjoy continuing to pursue learning through the summer.  And without the need to drop things and drive to "lessons" it means that we can truly take things at our own pace, reading for hours or getting really messy with some kind of science or kitchen project.

I also like the kids to get a daily dose of math and writing.   We do this in a relaxed manner and not every single day through the summer.  There are weeks that we do no structured curriculum studies at all because we've chosen to go on vacation or take a little break.  And there are weeks that we get so fired up about something new that we dedicate 30 hours that week to it. But to be honest, this is no different than the regular school year when we allow our life to be flexible -- and thank homeschooling for our ability to do so.

How do you spend your homeschooling summer?  Do you like to continue studies through the summer months?  Are you happy to take a few months off?  We'd love to hear your ideas and experiences.

Charles Darwin

Three years ago, my sons were fortunate to be cast in a National Geographic / Nova production called Darwin's Darkest Hour.  They played the two youngest sons of the famed biologist Charles Darwin.  It was my youngest boy's first time on set and he has fabulous memories of working with the cast, his favorite being Joe the dog!

Today as we eat our lunch, we are watching the film for educational value and nostalgia.

The film chronicles the difficulties faced by Charles Darwin as he comes ever closer to uncovering his theory of Natural Selection, which is in sharp conflict to his wife Emma's strong Christian viewpoint.  It demonstrates the conflict that Dawin experiences and the fondness he had for his wife and children; and the affect they had on this pillar of scientific history.

Watch Darwin's Darkest Hour on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Chemistry Fun!

As we prepare to begin a chemistry program I thought it would be a good idea for my boys to get a sense of what exactly the Elements are.  We've had periodic tables around the house in various forms forever.  But really what exactly are elements?  Enter:  Periodic Table Videos!  At first glance this is website has just a periodic table on it, but each of the elements has a clickable link to a youtube video produced by the University of Nottingham in England.

These videos are presented by the most likeable and entertaining geeks on YouTube.  We kids are a big fan of Pete...and his outakes on fun with hydrogen balloons.  You really must check these out!

We've been using these in conjunction with the Basher Book of the Periodic Table.

You'll have to click this link, for some reason the image links aren't functional on the blog.