New School Schedule (part 14)

One of my big projects over the Christmas break was making a new schedule for our school routine. I have had a MOTH schedule for many years. MOTH stands for Manager Of Their Homes, and is a scheduling tool originally made for larger families by Teri Maxwell of the Titus2 website. The book itself was extremely helpful for me to read and think through BEFORE attempting to make my first schedule. It helped me think through all of the things that needed to get done in a given day or even during the year (like those once a year cleaning jobs), and how to organize the children, myself, and my home so that all of the needed things could be accomplished. If you struggle with "getting it all done" I highly recommend this book!

Something else the book helped me with was figuring out what every member of the family would be doing at any given time. If I wanted to have a reading lesson when our oldest was in kindergarten, what would I do with the baby during this time? Where would the 2 year old and 3 year old be, and how could I best ensure that the reading lesson would not be interrupted?

Even though this book and scheduling tool were extremely helpful to me, I used (and still use) my schedule as more of a "routine" than a strict schedule. I did not want to overschedule every single minute. So for a few years my nicely color coded MOTH schedule taped to the fridge just said "school" for the 9-12 time slot for the school aged children. This worked well for quite a while, but this past fall we all struggled alot with our routine, me probably more than anyone. We started late. We didn't get our chores finished in a timely manner. Having 4 working at the same table meant that me and the student I was working with at the time were often interrupted. Our 6th grader and I were seldom doing Latin. Once we made it to lunch, I would often give the children an extra long recess, wanting to give our youngest as much outside play time as possible before his nap. That meant that we weren't finishing school until dinner time. This was a bummer for all of us. I knew in my heart that we could do better, and I had it in mind to make a new schedule that for a while was very tight - every subject scheduled out - so we could see how long things were actually taking and whether or not our allotted times were realistic. But I never had the time to do it.

Re-thinking the schedule and creating it in large poster form that all the children could read and follow throughout the day was one of my major goals during our break from school, and I am thankful to say that I got it done! We have had "family colors" for years, with everything color coded from notebooks to toothbrushes, so everyone is very used to looking for their color (I am "plum for mum"!). Today was our first day following the new schedule, and so far it is working GREAT! The children are enjoying recess as I type this. :-)

Here is our new schedule on a poster hanging prominently in our school room (the kitchen eating area). I am sure we will have a few kinks to work out, like when piano lessons alter our afternoon schedule, but I'm thankful to have a little poster to be accountable to. Just knowing it is there, and that the children are checking it frequently, is helping me to stay focused. If we can all stay focused enough throughout the day, we can finish by 2:30 or 3:00!!




You can click on the poster to see it larger. I don't know how long we will use it as is, so strictly scheduled, but probably as long as it takes us to build better habits. I have tried to work it so that when I am working on something brain-intensive with one child (like a reading lesson with 6 year old C, whose color is yellow) the others are doing things that they can do independently. We'll see how it all pans out. Okay now, off to do booktime with the younger two!