How I Scheduled Year 7

I am creating my version of AO's chart schedule for the first term of Year 7.  Bear in mind that of course what works for me may not be what works for you, ditto for my child and your child, and that my process varies somewhat from term to term and year to year.  I school four days a week because one day a week is spent at the park and at band, so that may be different from how you schedule too.

*** My section labels in these schedules are fairly arbitrary.  I don't really care if the label matches the section's contents.

I downloaded the chart schedule in the .doc format from the AmblesideOnline Year 7 Detailed schedule page.  (The Basic schedule page probably looks much different.  Starting in Year 7, the Basic schedule includes fewer assignments spread over a longer period of time and sometimes even schedules different resources than the Detailed schedule.)

I prefer to manage my charts from Google docs right now, even though they don't print quite as nicely from there, so I uploaded my file to Google drive, opened it, renamed it, and shared it with my child and my husband (view only so that my child won't change it).

Now I start rearranging.  First is Bible.   I noticed that NT had one assignment each week, while OT had three.  So I decided to separate the OT assignments into different "days" or rows on the chart.  I added two more rows below the Bible assignments, and started cutting and pasting parts of the OT work into the two new rows. This gave us five assignments per week in this section, so I will watch for an opportunity to move Selfish Pig into another section.

History is the next section listed.  Looking at the booklist, I can see that several of the scheduled History resources are online documents, so I added those to my Year 7 Pinterest board so my dd can find them more easily when they appear on the schedule.  I also notice that Asser's Alfred only appears in the last few weeks of the term, leaving an open space in those first few weeks.  I will look for something else to schedule in that spot during the first few weeks.  Scanning down the list, I notice that Great Astronomers only has assignments during the first four weeks, so I move that one to the row below Asser.  This give History three reading assignments during most weeks.  Saints and Heroes doesn't show up in the chart, but it's listed as optional on the booklist.  I want to use it, so I add it to the open slot in History.  That makes History complete.

I create a Geography section, with Brendan Voyage, Lay of the Land (which isn't really Geography), map work for Brendan Voyage, and map drill.

How to Read a Book and Story of Painting have assignments spread over several weeks.  I unmerge those cells so that each assignment appears in a single block.  Then I shift the assignments around so that, along with Ourselves, we have only one assignment per week in any of those three rows.  I move the Selfish Pig assignments down to the Citizenship section, so that with these two changes it now has four assignments each week.  Done.

I've unmerged the cells with the Adventures with a Microscope assignments.  I'll shift these to fit into weeks where one of the other science books has no assignment.  

I next need to get out the various science books and look at the linked resources from the booklist (and my Pinterest board) to see which ones need extra work such as labs.  These need to be scheduled too!

Grammar of Poetry is down in the weekly work section.  I need to move it up to the main part of the schedule so I can fit it into a block with the other assignments. The same is true for Plutarch, Shakespeare, grammar, and book of centuries.  Copywork and dictation will be daily items for us, and so will recitation.

Randomly, I decided to figure out poetry.  I don't own the recommended book, I didn't find the suggested link helpful, and my anthologies don't have any poems early enough for the term 1 historical period.  But I did find the Year 7 poems on the AO site, which I think are the ones we read last time we went through Year 1.  So we're going to read these: https://www.amblesideonline.org/PoemsYr7.shtml.  I pinned them to my Pinterest board so dd could easily find them.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made needs to be scheduled over the entire year.  So does Shakespeare as well as Grammar of Poetry.  I also want to assign specific lessons from Our Mother Tongue.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made has 25 chapters, all fairly short.  So I need to schedule 8 chapters a term (9 in one term) to divide it evenly over the year. It's meant to be a health book, so I need to schedule some additional reading/activities to go along with each chapter.  And I need to decide where in the schedule to place it.

Grammar of Poetry has 30 lessons, intended to last about 30 minutes each.  So I will schedule 10 lessons per term to divide it evenly over the year.  I'm putting it in the section of the schedule with some of the literature.  The literature selections are split across two different sections of my schedule now.

Looking at the science,  I think I will need to look at each book to see what sorts of labs, observations, or other activities are needed so I can schedule those.  It does seem more complicated to shuffle these science books around to make an even schedule.  Wonder Book of Chemistry seems to have experiments and observations to do regularly, so for now I've scheduled a spot for that type of work each week that we read a chapter from that book.

Signs and Seasons depends upon regular field activities.  I want to schedule these, because I know otherwise they won't get done.  First, I'm scheduling out readings of chapter 1, which officially is to be spread across a large portion of the year.  Then I looked in the back of the book at the field activities, and selected quite a few, placing them throughout the term.  One, the Shadows activity on p. 190, is meant to be done weekly for at least three months, so I've scheduled it weekly for the entire term.  I have not yet purchased the field journal, so we're just doing field work from the back of the book.

I've put Signs and Seasons and Fearfully and Wonderfully Made together in a section.  On weeks when we'll have only three assignments, I'm adding a short reading from The Way We Work (not scheduled in AO) to correspond to the Fearfully and Wonderfully Made topic.

I've been moving weekly work from the bottom of the schedule up into divisions in the top of the term's schedule.  I've just left the daily work down at the bottom.  I need to double-check that I've added into the schedule all the items I want to be sure we cover, like musical instrument practice.

Oh, and I have Secrets of the Universe in four volumes.  (Three actually, but the fourth is coming.)  So I need to mesh these with the scheduled chapters.  AO has a page to show me which chapters from the single volume (which is scheduled) correspond to the chapters in the separate volumes. 

I remembered that I wanted to add typing practice.  Since I have an empty slot in one of the literature sections, I added it there.  I don't really care about the labels for the sections, remember?  Just the balance of the workload.

I think I'm almost done.  I still need to schedule the Shakespeare play out over the term, and I need to add the recitation passages she'll be working on. She'll need to select a poem from the term's choices, a Bible passage, and a passage from our Shakespeare play.

You can see a sample chart showing three weeks of Term 1.

Year 7 Term 1 student checklist  - I slide this into a dry erase sleeve so we can wipe it off and start over again each day/week.  The right side is a daily list, and the left side is weekly.