The Good, the Bad and Tips to Make Them Work
A homeschool daily schedule can be cruel or it can be a useful tool. Here are tips for a realistic schedule that ‘works’ – without stress!
You’d think that after more than 20 years of home education, one would be immune to that nagging ‘not-doing-enough’ dis-ease. Apparently, it never goes away, but a quick self-check can help you assess whether the evidence in these circumstances (this week or this season) supports that uncomfortable accusation or not!
I realised recently that the daily schedules that we are not sticking to 100% are causing me this discomfort (yet again) and what I actually need to do is to tweak the schedules to get rid of the malady!
Why Use a Daily Schedule?
The Pros:
- It allows you to see that all the subjects or important skills/activities will be covered.
- A pre-filled schedule allows kids to know what to get on with unsupervised.
- With check-boxes to show completion of tasks, it acts as a record of your homeschooling day (to reassure you and perhaps the other parent.)
- It shows you have a plan.
- It gives you confidence.
- It’s a guide for a busy mom, juggling work, education and other things.
- It provides a model of how to plan for your children.
- It helps your children develop time management skills.
The Cons:
- A schedule can become the dictator of your days, if it’s not flexible.
- It could be unrealistic and overloaded.
- It screams ‘failure’ at you if you don’t stick to it.
- It can stress both moms and kids and impact their relationships if they are ‘behind’ on the schedule.
- It makes you reluctant to go out and do other things spontaneously because they will disrupt your schedule.
- It makes you focus on learning from books instead of viewing all of life as learning.
Tips to Make Your Schedule Work
Here are some tips to help you maximise the pros and minimise the cons of using a daily schedule – to make it work for you and not add to your discomfort and stress!
1. Expect Changes
- You should view your daily schedule as a tool and not your slave master.
- Expect to NOT accomplish everything on it, every week and prepare yourself emotionally for incompletion!
- Expect to tweak it regularly and view rescheduling the plan as a normal part of the process.
- Use a pencil to fill it in, if you must!
2. Embrace Interruptions as Opportunities
- Record your interruptions, unplanned learning activities or relationship-building opportunities that took place instead of the original planned activities so that you can see all other other things that life has thrown at you such as:
– practical life lessons – the washing machine flooded, the car broke down, a tradesman came to fix something,
– someone needed help – a dentist appointment, a neighbour needed a lift, a friend asked you to babysit her toddler etc.
– socialisation opportunities – a visitor arrived unannounced, grandparents came to stay, a party invitation
– relationship-building moments – you had a hard conversation with a child to teach and train them on some issue that cropped up, sibling rivalry or bad attitudes needed attention etc.
– impromptu outings – perfect beach weather, field trips arranged suddenly, sport events, homeschool support group activities etc. - Value the interruptions – sometimes these unplanned “interruptions” are the lesson and they are often more valuable than the planned lessons in a book, which will always be there to do another day.
3. Build a Flexible Schedule that “Works”
- Involve your (older) kids in planning and ask them what they feel is reasonable and do-able.
- Empower your kids as they mature to take charge of their learning.
- Plan a “catch up day” regularly.
- Don’t plan too far ahead. When an unplanned outing or opportunity comes along, it leaves you playing catch-up…which is fine if it’s once…but if it repeats you have to reschedule the whole schedule!
- Plan a “catch-up week” or a lite week at least once a term.
They say if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, but if the plan isn’t working, change the plan!
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