Homeschool Schedule
Duck Soup is giving away a book! If you are a homeschooler, visit her blog to find out details. The deadline is soon: 9:00 P.M. eastern time on Thursday, November 15th.
Our schedule for this year started out like this:
- 6:00 Get Up
- 6:30 Exercise
- 7:30 Breakfast
- 8:15 Economics (1 semester)
- 9:00 Art III (2 hours minimum each day)
- 11:00 Japanese II (45 minutes minimum each day)
- 12:00 Lunch
- 1:00 English IV (2 hours minimum each day)
Structure versus Realism
At the beginning of every school year, I lay out a schedule similar to the one above. We can follow it as long as no one gets sick. Each year around October and November some body would get sick, usually both children, so the schedule would then become something like this:
A Past Altered Schedule Example
Get up
Eat
Get Ready (clothes, teeth, hair, make bed)
School (Typically the 3-r’s)
Lunch
School (Typically science, history, arts or what is left)
2007-08 Altered Schedule
This year, as usual, hay fever plagues my daughter and this is her current schedule:
Get up
Eat
Get Ready
Economics, Art, Japanese, English
Lunch fits in there somewhere - usually before English.
Value of the Schedule
Despite not sticking to the schedule with precision, it still has value. If anything, it helps the kids to remember what to do between sneezes.
The irony of all of this is that the book prize is an unschooling book. 
Ducky has a great sense of humor!
Okay Duck Soup, enter me in your drawing please. 
Donna Young
The 6-week planner is on there..."
The page linked above describes how to use a composition notebook to make handwriting lessons. This is useful for remedial work or if you are on a very tight budget.
I wondered if someone (besides me, that is) would laugh at the prize to my “post your homeschool schedule” contest!
Holly’s altered schedule is da’ bomb. Thanks for entering, Donna!
I noticed the book also.
I kept thinking, I already unschool, the only structure we really have is on Monday. Then everything else worked around tantrums. 
Applie, that was funny!
I too like your schedule, Donna.
Hello Donna.
Are you, by any chance, using Rosetta Stone for your Japanese II? What made you choose Japanese? We have Rosetta Stone for German I & II.
Hi Robin,
We use Rosetta Stone. Holly picked Japanese and I’m not sure why except that possibly because she used to want to live there.
Hi Donna,
I was wondering if you might address the topic of setting up files.
Organization is not my strong suit and with 20 years of homeschooling under my belt I still haven’t come up with a workable system that allows me to find what I need when I want or need it.
I have four file drawers filled with papers and many discs for my computer.
The kids are 7-16 so there is not a lot that can be purged right now.
What works for you?
Thanks,
Theresa
Theresa that is a good question. I’ll have to get back to you on that.