Like I said yesterday, I’m changing the schedule/routine around here. One of my favorite homeschooling how-to books is The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. Homeschool long enough and you are bound to cross paths with it; it’s a popluar resource for classical home education.

Since I’m a plotter and a schemer, the chapter regarding yearly schedules caught my attention. If you have TWTM on your bookshelf, I’m talking about page 637, “Option 3.” This plan has schooling breaks at the holidays and when your children are most likely getting antsy.

This is the schedule:

School: September through October
Break: Week off
School: Late October until Thanksgiving
Break: Week off
School: Early December
Break: Three weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s
School: Mid-January until late February or early March
Break: Two weeks
School: March, April
Break: Two weeks off
School: Late April, May, on through summer
Breaks: Anytime during the summer, whenever you’re vacationing

I think this approach makes a lot of sense and I like the idea of having weeks off at a time. I’m also a believer in schooling over the summer; I think much is lost from a young mind if it is left to vacation away from the books too long.

If any of you have done Bauer’s plan, I’d love to hear your experiences. On the breaks I plan on doing all that fun stuff that tends to get overlooked.

All for now – babe is sleeping, big kids are ready for a hot chocolate break, and I think I’ll have some coffee.

UPDATE: Political blogger La Shawn Barber likes the flexiblilty we homeschoolers have too.

Stumbled upon a homeschool carnival this morning. There is lots to read, so grab a coffee and enjoy.

Here I go regarding routine again, but it’s September and it’s that time of year to get all “your ducks in a row,” so to speak. If I’m not organized with a plan of attack now, the year will be gone and I won’t have half of my goals accomplished.

Last year, also my first year officially homeschooling, I did a Monday through Thursday schedule for lesson days leaving Friday for catch-up or fun extras. I never counted the days we did, but I’m sure we did more than enough. Some days it did seem more than enough too!

We did fine sticking to this four-day routine, but do you know what happened? We never did do that fun stuff on Fridays. Library visits were intermittent, park days almost non-exsistent; we could have taken more breaks and not suffered for it. Come to think of it, I was pregnant at the time, so that’s probably why we stuck close to home so much.

Anyway, I guess you don’t hear many homeschooling moms say this but here goes:

I think we need to lighten up around here.

I mean, come on, this is my homeschool. We should be having fun. There is much more than pounding away at the books. I want it to be fun. I want my gang to say, “Gee, Mom, that was so much fun! I’m so glad you homeschool us!” That’s another advantage to the homeschool lifestyle: flexibility.

All that to say – I’m revising the schedule for more time off. Tomorrow I’ll let you know exactly what our new routine will look like. I also plan to blog about what I use to actually teach this tribe, so if you’re into all that – and I know most homeschoolers love to compare notes on all these things – come back tomorrow for the big reveal. I don’t mean to be so mysterious. It’s just getting late and the mommy brain is shutting down for the evening. Nite-nite.