houle school 2014

i love it when people tell me how they live their lives.  what routines they hold, their laundry systems, anything that involves habit and consistency and tradition.  it's amazing to me to see the values that others hold and then to see how they flesh out their day to day life in order to give those values life and breath.

this post is for any of you out there like me.  :) seeing other people's schedules motivates me to continue to tweak and work on my own.  this is all strictly for school so it might bore some of you.  when i was trying to figure out if i was going to homeschool, if i COULD homeschool, these kind of posts were so encouraging to me.

i'm printing out and planning 6 weeks at a time.  filling in the dates at the top and where we are at in our curriculum in the boxes.  every 6 weeks we will take a week off of our routine.  i hope to continue math and l.a. during that week, but just leave more room for field trips and planning the next 6 weeks, ect. 

i downloaded and used the tanglewood core book as well as easy classical's main schedule to create our own schedule, combining the things i liked about each.  

Wk-	Monday -	Tuesday -	Thursday -	Friday-
7:45-8:30	Devos/R.T./M.R.	Devos/R.T./M.R.	Devos/R.T./M.R.	Devos/R.T./M.R.
8:30-9:00	Breakfast, Bible and journal (verse, prayer, habit)	Breakfast, Bible and journal (verse, prayer, habit)	Breakfast, Bible and journal (verse, prayer, habit)	Breakfast, Bible
9:00-9:10	Chore	Chore	Chore	Chore
9:10-11:10 Aves Ash Ian	Math/l.a./student planner	Math/l.a./student planner	Math/l.a./student planner	Recite verse and habit on nature walk. Math and l.a.
11:10-11:30	Clean up/smiley faces	Clean up/smiley faces	Clean up/smiley faces	Clean up/smiley faces
11:30-12:00	Lunch/read aloud/memory work	Lunch/read aloud/memory work	Lunch/read aloud/memory work	Lunch/read aloud/History
12:00-12:20	Literature and narration	Literature and narration	Literature and narration	History
12:20-2:00	Recess	Recess	Writing Class	Recess
2:00-400	Ian nap science Avery read Ash 100 e lessons Girls: handi-crafts with composer	Ian nap science Avery read Ash 100 e lessons Girls: handi-crafts with composer	Ian nap Girls with grandma and grandpa	Ian nap Meet with aves (sp) Art
4:00-4:30	Tea/p.s./comp./poem	Tea/p.s./comp./poem		Tea/p.s./comp./poem

avery can get up at 7:45 she will be working through this in the morning before room time. 

R.T (room time)

M.R. (morning routine song "first we have to get up take our jammies off and then, put them all away so we can get dressed for our day, make our bed, clean our room, brush our teeth and hair, and then we'll be all ready and we can go downstairs.)

their journals after breakfast will be for writing down verses we are memorizing and habits we are working on.  habits will be chosen based on what we need to work on, like for our first one i think i'm going to go with "we clean up the sink after we brush our teeth and we put our toothbrushes and toothpaste back in the green bucket."  :) on fridays we will recite our verse and habit on our nature walk before doing one on one.

kids will do a 5 minute chore after breakfast. gather trash cans, clean bathroom floor, vacuum the play room rug, ect. 

one on one time with mom for math and l.a.  both girls will be in right start, avery will continue with phonics road and ash will do all about spelling ( i just really liked the flow from 100 easy lessons, to all about spelling, to phonics road....so i'm just going to do that again with ash...she'll start phonics road next year, as a first grader).  during ian's one on one, we'll be going through these.

while i'm working with ash and ian during one on one time, avery will work in her very own student planner that will have assignments in it (math and handwriting workbooks and some reading comprehension) 

the house tends to become a disaster zone during one on one time, so i'm hoping to have a clean up time each day after we finish math and l.a.. i give the kids smiley faces ( i literally just draw a smiley face on a piece of paper next to their name) as i see them cleaning with good attitudes, if they earn 3 smiley faces during clean up time they get a treat after lunch. 

after lunch we will work on our literature pockets for a little bit before recess.

during ian's nap i'll do science with the girls on mon/tues and history on fridays.  we are following easy classicals life science schedule and doing My State History Funbook.  after science avery will get some free reading time while ash and i continue working through 100 easy lessons. 

after reading time i am hoping to have some simple handicrafts available for the girls to work on, some days it will no doubt, just be coloring, but during this time i am going to try to have some classical music playing.  the goal will be to listen to the same composer for a few weeks during handicraft time and then read a short children's biography about that composer before moving on to a new one. 

when ian gets up, i'd like to have a tea party a few times each week.  "tea" and snacks and picture studies, basically we'll be doing the same thing with composers.  looking at a few classic artworks from the same artist for a few weeks, reading a short biography about that artist and then moving on to a new one.   i'd also like to read a poem during our tea time.  

fridays will be a bit different during quiet time.  i will meet with avery about her student planner and will try to have a more organized art project for them to work on.  

it's a full day, i know.  and most likely we won't start our tea time until the weather gets bad.  if it's nice outside, i will send them out there after nap time for sure.  

who knows, after 6 weeks i may have to revamp this whole thing. :)  

oh man, i'm getting excited!  first day of houle school will be monday, august 25th!