2009-2010 Average Day Chart

I‘ve been working on my Average Day Chart, trying to figure out how I am going to manage my time. This year is going to be different, as there is a neighbor girl {henceforth referred to as “M.”} who will be joining us in the mornings. And people say homeschooled kids aren’t socialized. Our children and M. will be together most every single day! M. is approximately four months older than A., but she is an oldest child, and a bit more advanced. On the chart, it looks like A. and M. are doing the same thing at the same time, but that isn’t necessarily so. Because they will have different levels of ability, they will be doing different, similar things at the same time. So, for instance, if they are working on writing letters, A. might be on capital A while M. might be on little d. It just depends on where they are at.

Anyhow, here is the chart {two pages total}:

I apologize for the colors. They look quite nice in my spreadsheet, but every time I transfer files like this to Scribd, I end up with garish colors. I am not willing to doctor it. Also, the formatting is nonexistent on the second page. I don’t know why. Does this matter?

In case you are wondering, we are doing Song School Latin at a slow speed. Our main goal is to learn to sing the songs and acquire the vocabulary. Only E. will be doing the actual workbook pages. I will probably spread chapters over two or three weeks instead of doing one per week, especially since I’ve only planned 15 minutes per day, and usually only four days per week.

I am trying to convince Si that we need to spend our Christmas money on Latin by Rosetta Stone and never buy another language program again.

During Ambleside Time, we will add any new necessaries to our wall timeline. I went through the year and prepared dated pictures for everything I could think of so that the children can simply take turns cutting out whatever we need to add that day. Perhaps someday I will have them draw pictures for the timeline, but to be honest one of my goals is to keep it beautiful and neat because it is on the wall of the main room in our house and everyone has to look at it for a full year.

Last year, we did spelling before Circle Time so that we were fresh for the subject. It was E.’s hardest subject at the time. Well, he has relaxed a lot and learned to enjoy spelling, but beyond this I cannot put spelling during the time that M. is with us. Too often, we went “over” in the time allotted, and since I am wanting to do a large variety of things with the girls, I don’t want spelling to eat up our morning. Better to do it in the afternoons when most of the other children are sleeping and M. has gone home.

One of the things that I think is going to happen is that we get more done with M. here. I am determined to fit the bulk of school into the morning so that M. can benefit from all of it. At the same time, I also do not have a newborn, nor a pregnancy, for the first time…in seven years. So I don’t have those things causing me to spread school out over a larger space.

I didn’t put Q. on the chart, but she will be there. She will be required to join us for Circle Time. After that, I am going to see what she wants to do. If she wants to play, she can, but if she wants to join M. and A., I am open to that. I definitely plan to have her present for most of the Special Projects Rotation, which is what I’m calling all my random extras that aren’t in Circle Time this year.

By the way, I switched out the folk song. I know, I know. I made a big deal about The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks, and now I changed it? Well, I just decided that I wanted something more upbeat, and so we are going with an oldie but goodie, Turkey in the Straw.