Questions: Homeschooling & Scheduling

Okay, as promised here is a "Part 2" to yesterday's post.  Yesterday I talked about time - making time for homeschooling, how much time we homeschool, etc.  Today I'm going to talk about scheduling.  These two topics always seem to go hand-in-hand so I hope this helps any questions you have.  Any more, feel free to ask.

Do you have a set schedule?

Yes... and no.  We have a set schedule for the six subjects a day that Optimus Prime & Bumblebee do, but that's it.  Scooby-Doo is isn't even preschool age yet, if he doesn't want to do his worksheets he doesn't have to.  We don't have a set "story time" or anything like that.  We read what we want, when we want.

What is your schedule?

(You can always find Optimus Prime & Bumblebee's current schedule on their page and Scooby-Doo's current schedule on his.)

We have two schedules, the morning schedule and the afternoon/evening schedule.

In the morning we do all of our schoolwork and chores.  We have breakfast and get dressed, then Optimus Prime & Bumblebee will do three subjects, usually followed by Scooby-Doo doing his schoolwork, followed by most of our chores for the day, followed by Optimus Prime & Bumblebee's other three subjects, followed by lunch, followed by cleaning up all the schoolwork supplies and dishes.

In the afternoon we read books, play games, do puzzles, watch a documentary, practice reading with Optimus Prime & Bumblebee, Scooby-Doo will sometimes takes a nap, things like that.  The morning rush is followed by an easy day with a lot of relaxing, goofing off, and very few chores.

Right now our morning schedule is abridged because Scooby-Doo's speech therapy was more than we though it was going to be, and our afternoon schedule does not have any tv right now and not as much playtime, but it's still essentially the same.

Do you have to write up a schedule?

This really depends on the state where you live.  We live in Texas, so the answer is no.  If you live in New York, then the answer is yes, you legally have to have a schedule in case the state decides to stop by your house to make sure you're actually homeschooling your kids.

Now, if we take the legality aspect of the answer away (because it varies state-by-state) then my answer to you would be do what works best for you & your family.  In the case of my family, my kids like a set schedule in the morning for their schoolwork and chores, followed by an unstructured day of playing and reading with very few chores.  In the afternoon if I need their help with a chore, or decide it's time to read a book then I'll give them a 5 or 10 minute warning so there are no meltdowns or freakouts when they have to stop and come over to do something else.

Do you recommend writing a schedule?

Yes, yes I do.  Even if it is just a rough out line for the day/week/month you want to make sure you are covering your bases and not shortchanging your kids.  Your kid needs to learn addition, subtraction, how to read, etc. and personally I really think you should have a plan to meet those goals.  Now, do you need to write up a super detailed lesson plan for the day/week/month?  No.  Unless, of course, you want to.  A rough outline will work beautifully, trust me.  Just so long as you know your goals and can see them on paper it will help you to meet your goals.

Do you like having a set schedule?

No, I actually hate it.  I'm lazy and just want to lay in bed all day and read books (by myself or with my kids).  But life doesn't work that way, and stuff needs to get done.  Everyone likes the morning schedule routine, and everyone likes like afternoon free-for-all, so we go with that.

Do you ever change your schedule?

Dear god, yes!  Every three months.  We don't want things to get boring here!  I change what subjects we cover, the order we cover them in, the number of pages we do, the number of subjects a day, etc.  By the time we get halfway through month three of our schedule everyone's ready for a change.  So I change it.  Homeschooling shouldn't be monotonous.

Also, sometimes plans change and schedules need to be adjusted.  It's all swell and fine to write up an entire school years schedule (and in some states you legally have to) but if you plan for one month of number order in September, followed by one month of addition in October, followed by one month of subtraction in November, followed by one month of fractions in December, followed by one month of counting by fives in January, followed by one month of counting by tens in February, followed by one month of telling time in March, followed by a month of money in April, what happens when it's week three of March and you never want to look at a clock again in your life and you start getting bitchy during math lessons?  Or your kid still needs help with subtraction in January?

It's currently March.  Optimus Prime still needs to draw circles and x them out when doing subtraction problems, and half the time he still gets the answers wrong.  If I had a schedule like the one I just mentioned I'd be pulling my hair out right now.  I'd be freaking out saying, "How can he still not get it?!?  We're supposed to be on telling time right now!"  Instead I'm not worried about it.  Our current schedule just says "4 pages of math."  Right now we are reviewing number order, to make sure they still have it down.  We'll come back to subtraction after we've all had a nice break from it.

What do you do when your schedule changes/is disrupted?

Okay, I hope you have a couple of hours to read about my personal life.

Kids get sick, you get sick, relatives from across the country come to visit, you relocate to a new town halfway across the country, your youngest has to go to speech therapy, your oldest two have to play t-ball, etc.  These are all scenarios that we have faced, and I've probably left out a few.  When Optimus Prime & Bumblebee were in kindergarten the whole family was so sick for two months straight we didn't do a single bit of schoolwork.  We got the worst flu I've ever seen.  Everyone was piled in bed watching movies on the computer or sleeping because there was nothing else we could do.  Except for my poor husband, who actually went to work each day.  We made up all that schoolwork over the next month.  Everyday we did three day's worth of schoolwork, so we didn't fall behind.  I was determined, and they were good sports about it.  I think they were just relieved to be better again and back onto our regular schedule.

When they were in pre-k Scooby-Doo was so sick for four months straight that we just stopped homeschooling.  This was also coupled with a move from Alaska to Texas.  I was running on less than four hours of sleep a day, worried sick about my newborn.  I was in no position to homeschool anyone.  It was no big deal because they were in pre-k, and had been doing pre-k since they were 3.  If it was another grade we would of made up the schoolwork, but at that time we weren't doing a set schedule.  Everyday for pre-k we were just doing whatever we wanted, so we shelved the workbooks until Scooby-Doo got better.

These were major disruptions, and we bounced back.  And it made us love homeschooling even more.  Could you imagine pulling your kids out of school for two months straight because they couldn't seen to stop catching the flu?  The back log of homework would of been hell, and my kids would of been so far behind.  Instead, there was no stress, no worry.  We caught up, we moved on.

If you can get over a major disruption like that, then small ones are no biggie.  We have shitty days.  Days when the kids are sick, days when they can't seem to focus, days when they just need a day off.  I just swap our schedules a bit.  Take off an extra day and make it up later on in the week.  Do a little extra work each day or skip one of our normal days off.  Just this week, actually, I let my kids take Thursday off and we did Thursday's schoolwork on Saturday.  They were feeling burned out and wanted a day off so I let them.

Now, if a planned short-term disruption is coming up than you can just adjust your schedule accordingly.  My grandmother is coming to visit in April.  Every time she comes, no matter how hard I try, we do not stay on schedule.  So, the week before she comes we always double up on our schoolwork.  If we do schoolwork when she's here then we are doing it ahead of schedule.  If we do none, then we're just fine when she leaves and my kids just got a week off.  It's win-win as far as I'm concerned.

If a planned long-term disruption is coming up then just fix your schedule.  Our schedule is not set in stone.  Once I write it I try to do everything in my power to stick to it for the next three months but sometimes it just doesn't work and you have to start from scratch.  Take this quarter.  I knew Scooby-Doo had to do speech therapy, but I thought it was just going to be for two days a week, half an hour a day.  "No biggie," I thought.  "We can keep our schedule and just tweak it a bit.  We can still do our six subjects a day for Optimus Prime & Bumblebee.  We'll play Scooby-Doo's schoolwork by ear.  Yes it will suck for those two days that we have to be out of town for 1 1/2 hours, but I can just make those our days off, or make one of them our day off to help lighten the load."

Then came the reality check.  It was speech therapy everyday for two hours a day (plus an hour in the car).  Our schedule lasted one week, and let me tell you it was a stressful week.  So I tossed it and wrote a new one.  I'm not happy with our current schedule, but it'll have to do for something written on the spur of the moment, and we're committed by this point in time.

The good thing about homeschooling is your ability to adapt to any situation and still come out ahead.  I wish our current schedule looks different, but the major focus on reading has helped Optimus Prime & Bumblebee make huge leaps in that area in just the past few weeks.  The other day Optimus Prime read a page in Fancy Nancy almost completely by himself.  He didn't know two of the words (and they were big words) and he needed prompting with two other words.  It was a huge breakthrough moment for him that made him (and me) realize that all his hard work was starting to pay off.

Sometimes our schedule gets disrupted beyond repair, but we just bounce back with a new set of goals, and we meet them.

I hope all of this helps!

Questions: Homeschooling & Time

People ask me a lot of questions about homeschooling, and you know what?  That's fine.  I homeschool, I love homeschooling, and I love talking about homeschooling.  A lot.

Seriously, I could talk about it all day, and some days I do.

I get asked so many questions about it that I decided I need to start writing posts about them to help everyone out.  So here's my first one.

The biggest one (at least lately) is the time factor question, and the questions that always seem to overlap with it.  So, here are the questions I've been asked (and asked, and asked) along with my responses.  Hopefully they will help.  Tomorrow I'll put a sort of "Part 2" of this post that tackles the question of scheduling, since those two questions always seem to go hand and hand.

Also, please don't think that just because I wrote this post I don't want people asking me about homeschooling.  I don't mind getting asked questions about it.  Seriously, I don't.  This post is more for people who haven't emailed me yet, or who are too afraid to.  Any questions you have just ask away and I will gladly answer.

How many hours a day do you homeschool?

It varies day by day.  By our old/usual schedule we spend at least 1 1/2 hours and at most 3 hours.  It depends on everyone's mood, how well everyone is able to focus, and what our workload looks like.  On a perfect day, Optimus Prime & Bumblebee do three subjects in the morning for 30 minutes, 3 subjects right before lunch for 30 minutes, and Scooby-Doo does his schoolwork for 30 minutes somewhere in there.  Spread throughout the day we read board books, storybooks, and chapter books.  Optimus Prime & Bumblebee will practice their reading, or counting by 5's or 10's, or work on puzzles.  Some days they play school with their dinosaurs or stuffed animals teaching them the same things they or their baby brother are learning.

Right now our schedule is a bit disrupted because Scooby-Doo goes to speech therapy everyday for 2 hours, and we have an hour round trip to get him to and from there.  So, right now we only do schoolwork for about 1-1 1/2 hours each day.  Optimus Prime & Bumblebee, on a perfect day, will do 3 subjects for 30 minutes in the morning followed immediately by Scooby-Doo doing his for 30 minutes.  We then clean up, have lunch, load up the car, and take Scooby-Doo to speech therapy.  While he's there we go off to the library to practice their reading and I'll read them some storybooks or a chapter book.  We do this for about 1 1/2 hours everyday.

Is homeschooling your kids hard to do/lots of work?

Ummmm, no.  Actually, it's really easy and loads of fun.  Like I said, we don't have to spend much time on it each day so it's easy in that sense.  Also, it's fun to plan schoolwork lessons around things like Batman.  Or Halloween.  Or Vikings.  Or whatever strikes your (and your kids) fancy.

As far as lots of work, it can feel that way when you start out and you're a bit lost and confused and you're worried about doing it wrong, but give it a couple of weeks (or even months) and you'll find your stride and the work will just kind of disappear.  It's only as hard and complex as you make it.

Where do you find the time?

We have a set schedule in the morning and that really helps (more on that tomorrow).  Otherwise it only takes a few minutes here, a few minutes there.  Plus, you can incorporate homeschooling into any activity.  Baking a cake uses fractions & math, if you have dvd's some movies have a Spanish (or French) language option, you can read signs as you walk your kids to the park or have them read labels in the grocery store.  These are just a few ideas.  You don't have to sit at the table and do worksheet after worksheet and lesson plan after lesson plan.  You can use anything to homeschool your kids (especially with the internet at your fingertips).

Why do you spend so little time on homeschooling each day?  If your kids were in school then they would be learning for six hours or so, not the little time you say.

Every time I get asked this I get amused.  Don't get me wrong, it's a legitimate question, but stop and think back to your days in school.  High school was almost 15 years ago for me, but I can still remember it, and how some days it would take teachers 15 minutes to get the class to settle down and pay attention.  I also remember starting to pack my bag 10 minutes before the bell rang because I just wanted to get away from whatever boring class I was in and go hang out in the hallways with my friends.  I also remember substitute teachers, and how no one would listen to them and just spend the whole class acting like it was a free period.
Elementary school (where we are at right now) is no different.  Scooby-Doo does his speech therapy at the elementary school in our area, so I'm there everyday, and honestly teachers only spend about 15 minutes or so on their lessons for each subject.  A lot of time is spent trying to get hyper kids to settle down and stop talking.  Kids ask for bathroom breaks or disrupt the class in other unintentional ways.  It must be frustrating to try and get 20-30 kids who have a short attention span to settle down and pay attention for a few minutes.
So, when classes are only 45-60 minutes long and half of that is spent on settling down the class, how much are your kids really getting out of school?  I'm not saying don't send your kids to school, I'm just saying be practical here.  In elementary school you are there for 6 hours.  Two hours of that (at least) are lunch, recess, and gym class (need to burn off all that extra energy!) each day.  That leaves 4 hours for class, half of which is spent on bathroom breaks, settling kids down, and shuffling them room to room.  That leaves 2 hours for class, which is pretty much how much time we spend.

Now, my kids don't have extra homework to take home, but they do have unlimited one-on-one time with me to help them get a concept down, no matter how long it takes.  Kids don't get that in school.

I remember 5th grade, and learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  I also remember the unit test and how I was supposed to underline the verbs, circle the nouns, etc. in each sentence.  I remember looking down at that page and not having a clue, so I just started circling random stuff.  I remember handing in my test, and the teacher calling me back to her desk five minutes later.  I remember her saying "I won't accept this.  Take it back and redo it.  Did you even try to answer the questions?"  I remember feeling so embarrassed and humiliated as I walked back to my desk with my test.  I remember moving around some of my circles and lines, and handing the test back in at the last minute so I didn't get called out again.  I don't remember what my grade was, but do you know what else I do remember?  I remember that unit was over, and we never went over it again even though I clearly did not understand it.  My teacher couldn't hold up the whole class because of one kid.  And I also remember not understanding those concepts until high school, when I had to teach them to myself because no one ever took the time to make sure I knew.

Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't send your kids to school.  But while my kids might only spend a couple of hours each day on actual work, we work on something until they understand it.  We don't just wash our hands of the unit and say, "Too bad, he/she had his/her chance and they missed it."

How do you know what your child's time limits are?

Trust me, they'll tell you.  My kids can only sit still for three subjects at once.  Any more than that and I'm pushing it and they are tuning me out.