Organizing Our Homeschool

Last school year we implemented a revised scheduling system that was a bit more complicated than what we had done in the past, so that I could manage work for three kids (plus a roamer) and give them some independence and flexibility. 

This year I wanted to tweak this a bit to improve some aspects that were time consuming.  I'll have four needing a schedule, although only three will be doing an official Ambleside Online year.

Our schedule has two parts:  the master schedule and the child's weekly sheet.

The master schedule for each child is a chart (like this one for Year 2) that shows every assignment for every week for the 12-week term.  I print this out and keep it in my binder where I keep everyone's schedule.  I do edit it first to reflect our own preferences and to add other items I want to track.  I sorted the work into somewhat arbitrary categories so that each category has a fairly even work load for the week.  This becomes important in the child's weekly sheet.  I also put the memory work for the term at the end so I'll have the passages handy when needed each day.

The child's weekly sheet has two parts.  One is a list of every book (or weekly work type) for the term.  These are sorted into the categories I created when I edited the master chart. One is a list of all the daily work plus the list of categories.  The daily list has a line separating it into two parts--above the line the tasks must be complete before the child can eat lunch!  Below the line the tasks must be complete before any free time is to be had.  I let the kids pick icons to designate the various categories, so the category title on the daily list will show a picture that matches the picture next to all the books/resources in that category over on the weekly list.  This sheet is inserted in a dry erase pouch to which I added magnet tape to hang it on the freezer.  Each pouch has its own pen, even!

My part of all this is to update the child's booklist at the beginning of the week, crossing off the books that are not scheduled for that upcoming week.  Each day, then, the child has to work down the daily list, doing all the daily activities and choosing one book/resource from each category.  When an item is completed, it is crossed off the daily list and, if it was an item from the weekly list, that book/resource is crossed off over there too.  This allows the students to select their own work for the day but keeps their workload balanced throughout the week.

We have not yet tried this at all, but since it's very similar to the system we used last year, I have confidence that it will work smoothly.  If not, I'll let you know!

Update:

Here are some more recent examples of these checklists.