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If I’ve been asked that question once, I’ve been asked 50 times….all in the past 2 weeks. This is the time of year when everyone is planning their school year, their activities, their field trips, their schedules. Well, if truth be told, I began planning all of that about 4 months ago!
By nature I’m a planner. But following through with the plan….not so much. So every year, I set myself up to fail. I write out an elaborate schedule, beginning much earlier that I realistically would ever start, penciling in all the subjects, the chores, the breaks. And then end up throwing it all away when I find out I just can’t make it work.
The truth is, I work full-time, until late at night. I don’t arise at 7am…or 8….or some days even 9. And neither does my child…..not willingly anyway. So this year, I have a new plan, a much simpler plan. A plan that I should be able to stick with. A much less stressful plan.
We will begin our day with breakfast and a time of Bible reading/praise/prayer….often simultaneously, especially if it’s getting to be later in the morning.
Then school time is divided into 1 hour blocks. hour 1: 3 Rs The time we start depends on what time I’ve gone to bed (some nights I work until 1-2am) and what else we have going on. Oftentime, our school day is interrupted by a field trip, playdate, library day, or errands. Of course we squeeze lunch and other breaks into the day as well. And many days, it doesn’t take quite an hour to finish some blocks, but I like to allot that much time so we don’t ever feel “behind.” The reason I do the blocks of time is so that if we have something else to do on a given day, I can think about where to squeeze in a one-hour block of school time. It’s much less overwhelming for me, if we’re busy with other commitments. I can always find an hour somewhere in the day. I think more will end up getting done because I shouldn’t get that, “we don’t have time to do school today” mentality. So there you have it, my simplified schedule. Now if I can’t follow this one, we have a serious problem.
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