Scheduling School Work

Regardless if you homeschool or send you children to a physical school, it’s that time of the year when kids have started or are about to start a new calendar year (a new grade).

Kira our oldest turns 5 this year, but she is a December baby which makes her a late birthday and not eligible until next year for Kindergarden. So this year we will be doing VPK - Voluntary Pre-Kindergarden and we are planning some great activities that we hope to be sharing with you.

We officially started this past Monday, this entire week we are dedicating it to re-capping and re-enforcing some of the basic things that we had been covering last year. and while some may say that she is still to young, we believe it is never to early to start learning and educating our kids.

Since most kids, including our darling daughters love to play, we play, have fun and incorporate educational activities with as many things that we do. As a matter of fact I think our life is on ongoing teaching- learning day to day. This is way I made the statement on the previous paragraph that we “Officially Started”.

I have been asked many times how do I do it? Doing a million things is not easy and I am far from being super mom. While our family is always first we all have things to do, so managing and balancing is the trick. I as most people don’t have all the time in the world, I do love to sit down with our girls and teach them about this or that but we only have 24 hours a day and sometimes we don’t get to sit down, that does not mean we don’t incorporate a learning experience within our daily do’s, since we do many things together, we have found that this is the best way to teach our children.

We try to keep in mind that they are a little sponge, absorbing what we say and do. Paying attention to the little things that we would normally take for granted. But at the same time it is important for them that we set aside some special time to teach them something, it not only helps in their academic education but it also creates a habit, a sense of organization and endorses the concept of day to day scheduling (something that we really like).

So if you are just about to start with your little one or even if you have been doing homeschooling or school time at home (after school) a good thing to start with is a schedule, not only make one but having them participate in the making of the everyday task will make it easier to maintain.

There are many ways that you can develop a schedule, and you can be as open or as specify as you would like. The one thing that most schedules will have in common is that you would always put down the day, but even the day can be open to change, below are the different ways that we have considered when we sit down to write our learning schedule:

1. Days of the week, time of the day, activity to do, and learning skill
2. Days of the week, activity to do, and learning skill. This leaves the time slot open and may not work for everyone.
3. Activity and learning skill (leaving the day open to discussion)
4. Days of the week and learning skills with a ray of activities to choose from. (Leaving room for the child to select what he/she would like to do)
5. Days and time for open homework (Only recommended for children attending a physical school)

As you can see there are a few things to consider before we sit down to create our home-school activity schedule and it all depends on your own schedule and preferences.

If you have created a home-school schedule to do with your children let us know what are the things that you took into consideration and what is working best for you.