Let's chat schedules!

I have had some questions about how we schedule our day.  First of all, if you ask 100 homeschool families this question, you will probably get 100 different answers.  That's one of the benefits of homeschool!  You can schedule your school around your life.  For those that unschool, their school day will look like every other day without formal school, since...it is for the most part.  For families following a more traditional school format, their schedules might resemble a more traditional school schedule.  Most people fall somewhere in between.  My boys, like many other kids on the autism spectrum, do much, much, much better when there is order, routine, and a schedule in their daily lives.  They can go for a bit without it, but after a while, they start suffering.  When we have a schedule in place, it helps every facet of their lives, not just academics.  They are better able to organize their thoughts, control their emotions, and handle life better when I have our schedule locked up nice and tight.  If we don't have one, they ask for it.  Here is our schedule for this school year:

 It took 3 years of fine tuning to get the perfect schedule for us...for right now at least.  We can always change and adjust as needed.  This is what we used at the end of last year, just adjusted to fit our needs this year.  I'll go over some of the things we do that might not be self-explanatory, and provide links so you can get a feel for our days.  On Monday's this year, the boys attend an outside science class, and on Friday's we have our fine arts co-op.  

This is the first year I've attached times to the schedule.  Andrew's response was "Finally, I've been asking for times for years now!"  So yes, the times are important in our family.  And we stick to them, because, once it's in place, it's what we do.  The boys like their routines.  Plus, after working all morning, my boys are done after lunch, so they do not mind getting started early.  We do a bit after lunch, as you can see, but for the most part, once they are finished, the day is theirs.  They both have varied interests, and I really want to give them time to explore those interests on their own.

Anyway, back to our schedule.  We start the day with chores.  We all do chores.  The boys don't get an allowance, but we do pay them weekly for mowing the lawn.  For us, that goes above and beyond helping out around the house.  Once they finish their chores for the day, they put a sticker on an index card (the stickers correspond with our unit study, because I'm a little nutty like that).  When the card has 8 stickers on it, we do something simple yet fun, like a car wash, a snow cone, froyo, etc.  Our chore list is pretty simple.  The boys just do the chores listed for the day.  I found this cute chore notepad at Mardel, and change it up sometimes just to keep things rotated.  Oh, and keeping it real. My handwriting stinks, and I didn't realize I'd be posting this form, so I didn't even try to make it neat.  I didn't feel like re-writing it, so y'all get to see my messy chore form.

This year, we are focusing on making learning easier for the boys.  We are doing some brain integration and writing activities from Dianne Craft.  I attended her seminars during a homeschool conference, and was intrigued.  We're giving it a year, hopefully we will see results, and writing won't be such a struggle for the boys.  You can read about her work here.  This is really the only part of the day the boys don't like too much.  It's boring, and repetitive.  I think it's important for their future, so we are adapting the mindset of "get r done" and move on.

Activity sticks have been the hit of the year so far (after the unit studies, of course).  I found out about them through a blog I saw on Facebook.  You can read the blog post about activity sticks, but the short overview is,  I take Popsicle sticks and write quick activities on one end (run to the fence gate 3 times, jump rope for 3 songs, play h-o-r-s-e, play soccer for 15 minutes, take a scooter ride around the neighborhood, etc) and stick them in a cup writing side down.  When it's time for their break, the boys grab one (Lucas picks at the first break, Andrew at the second) and we do the activity.  They put the "used" stick in a different cup.  After we have completed all the sticks in one, we'll start grabbing from the other.  When we finish the activity, they are a lot more focused and ready to go back to work.  It's made school fun, and gets us moving at least 30 minutes before lunch!

Unit studies take up the bulk of the day, and encompass many different subjects.  Everything from literature, writing, reading, history, science, geography, art appreciation, home ec, and more are wrapped up in our unit of study.  We have some really fun unit studies planned this year.  Those will be the focus of my future blogs, so I won't get too much into it now.  It's also the most fun part of our day!!  

When it says Free Read 20, that's simply reading from the book basket for 20 minutes.  What's a book basket?  It's a basket full of books that relate to our unit study.  Some are easy readers, some are chapter books, non-fiction, fiction, poetry, living math, anything I can find that somehow (even if it's a stretch) tie in with our unit studies goes in the basket.  The boys love the book basket.  They have me pick out the books from the library every week, so the books that go in the basket are a surprise.  They check out books for themselves, but they leave the area when I start getting basket books.  It's a fun way to pull in many topics, and it gives the boys a chance to make connections over many different genres and subjects to what we're studying.

For PE this year, we are going to take a fitness class that offers homeschool fitness for the kids, and a parents class at the same time.  It's from 3:00-4:00, which is perfect timing.  It gives the boys some free play time after school work, but doesn't go too long into the afternoon, so they also have plenty of free time when they get home.  The boys and I are both REALLY excited about starting.  We are just waiting on Andrew's leg to heal.

The band practice is there as a reminder for Andrew to practice his trombone.  At this point, I'm still helping him, so we usually do it right after book basket time.  Once he gets where's he a little more independent with it, he'll be able to track his own time.

That's it!  That's our day!  If you see anything on the schedule that I haven't explained, or you would like more information about, please let me know.  Also, please comment and share your schedule!  I love to see what works in other homeschooling families.  :)

A Scrumdiddlyumptious Day!

We are always thankful that we found homeschooling.  It's the perfect fit for my kiddos and our family.  Even though we are always thankful, not every day is easy.  Many days are hard.  We also have days that are great, fun, and even awesome.  Then, you have days like Monday, where homeschool just plain ROCKS.  It was a knock-your-socks-off day that really set the tone for a fantastic year.  I know, you're thinking..."wait, they homeschool, why are they starting the same time as the public school/private school kids?"  And the answer is...my boys LOVE it.  They love the back to school excitement.  They love school supplies.  They love going outside and waiving "good bye" to their friends that ride the bus.  They just love the back to school feeling!  So, we do it up BIG to match their excitement.  We started with pictures:

My 6th and 4th graders!

Being silly!

After obligatory pictures, we headed out to our traditional back to school breakfast.  The very first year we homeschooled, I had a coupon to Denny's.  We never eat at Denny's, but, hey, a coupon.  So, the next year...Denny's!  This year, Denny's again.  It's an unexpected tradition, but we very rarely eat breakfast out, so it's a real treat for the boys, and something very different.  They think it's awesome that they are usually the only school aged kids in the restaurant.  Last year, I had a few dollars, so they got to try their hand at the claw machine.  This year, they got to do the same. Tradition, you know.  And WON!  After Denny's, we had our traditional back to school car wash (something else we did last year, that is now a "tradition"), and I discovered that anything we do on this day will be considered "tradition", so I need to keep that in mind. ;)  After all that, we headed home to start our school day.

Gettin' our grub on at Denny's

Claw machine experts!

Our new mascot--Tiger (the bear)!!

We are starting our year with a chocolate unit study.  I may have gone a bit overboard (who...me?!?), but there are just so many neat things you can do with chocolate.  I found chocolate essential oil, which I placed in our school-room diffuser before we left.  So when the boys walked in after breakfast, they walked into a chocolate scented room.  Mmmmm...I also found chocolate scented pencils and stickers.  Those were waiting for them at their seats.  We started the school day by going over our brand new schedule, and walking through what our day-to-day schooling was going to look like this year.  Andrew was thrilled that I put times on our schedule.  Last year, it was more of a routine, which bothered him a little.  He's much happier with times.  I'll go into our schedule more in another post.  After that, we dove right in to our chocolate study.  We read the first chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  The boys had to decide the genre (both really wanted it to be non-fiction, but knew better...fiction it is), and spent some time discussing the story elements.  Let me tell you, reading about Charlie walking past the chocolate factory while literally smelling chocolate in the air was too cool.  I'm so glad I ordered the oil.  We're going to be doing a fun writing project with the book, I'll post all the links and resources for our chocolate study soon.  After our reading time, we moved on to a QR treasure hunt.  I found this cute resource on Teachers Pay Teachers, which you can check out here.  We're doing 2 QR codes per day.  On our first day, we learned about the cacao bean, what it is, where it's grown, and how it's harvested.  After that, we learned it's early history, and how it traveled from the rain forest to high society.  We also learned a little about modern chocolate.  No study would be complete without samples!  I ordered raw cacao beans off Amazon (I love Amazon), and we spent some time exploring the inside of the beans.  The boys thought they were so cool.  Until they finally took a bite!  Bitter!!!  Andrew kind of liked it, however.  Lucas...not so much.  Then, we sampled some modern chocolates containing 90% cacao, 60% cacao, milk chocolate (34% cacao), and white chocolate.  Did you know that white chocolate is not really chocolate?  It doesn't contain any cacao!  It does contain coco butter, however, and was the boys favorite.  Mine was the 90% chocolate.  That wrapped up our short-but-sweet school day.  It was a fun overview of what's going to be a busy, but awesome year.  The boys are getting older and acquiring so many new skills.  We are changing things up to accommodate their desire to get out and try new things.  This year, we have joined a music co-op, where Andrew will be in the band-playing trombone- and choir, and Lucas will take a general music class.  Both boys are also taking an outside-the-house science class (zoology).  We ended our day with a visit to Menchie's and some froyo with our homeschool group.  It was so good to see our old homeschool friends, and meet some new people in the group as well.  When we arrived back home, there was a box waiting for the boys.  I had ordered them Bop-It's, and they arrived while we were gone.  The boys were overjoyed and I was amazed at the good timing!

Bop-It Smash Time!!

I hope everyone had a great first day back to school, and I look forward to sharing our adventures with you this year!  :)