I realized that my sons had thought I was making up our requirements for the day each morning and therefore assumed there was room for negotiations. So one term I wrote the schedule for the day on the whiteboard where everyone could see it. What looks like resistance and pushback against me turns out to actually just be resistance to stepping into another day with unknown, unwritten (to them) expectations. Not only do I want them to become self-directed, but they naturally want autonomy as well. Without knowing what’s next or what’s on the agenda, they cannot be self-directed. If I’m always the director, then they never get a chance to learn self motivation. That might work for a five-year-old, but not so much a ten-year-old.Īfter all, I wanted to raise self-motivated and self-directed learners, but the way I was keeping the plan was preventing that from happening. I set myself up for a hard transition as my children became older and formed more firm opinions.īecause the schedule was only in my own head or in my own notebook, I was always directing everyone, telling them what to do. I didn’t realize it was a temporary situation. My children could not read and needed to be prompted to do the next thing. It worked because I was the director at that point. Everything I needed, including the schedule, was on that clipboard. When I first started homeschooling, with a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a baby, I kept a clipboard. Secret #1 – A homeschool daily schedule should be visible to everyone. I challenge you to try a schedule for your homeschool again, taking into account the following three secrets proven to make your daily plan workable. Just because you’ve tried a schedule before and it didn’t work doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try again.īeing rigidly scheduled or flying by the seat of your pants are not the only two options. All that needs to affect the plan and the schedule. We’re working with our specific children, too, with known needs and desires and temptations and issues. On top of that, a homeschool plan also needs to that into account the fact that we’re working with children. The goal for both planning and scheduling needs to be to think through our families’ situations and needs realistically and make a plan to use our time wisely and effectively – not perfectly.Īs we make our plan, we take into consideration the fact that we are human, that we run out of energy, that we need breaks, that we dislike some of what needs to happen. Writing is an exercise in thinking, and if we’re stuck in wishful-thinking planning, our plans won’t get far. Simply having written something will not bring it to pass. We fill out the calendar, planner, or template with wishful thinking.ĭespite what some say, there is no magic in writing it down. The biggest problem with most homeschool schedules is the same as with most planning. But then we’re exhausted in a different way, with the fatigue that comes with having to make too many decisions on the fly and bully or cajole our children through their work. We blame the schedule and we try to homeschool without one. Obviously, we conclude, homeschool schedules don’t work. The normal way to approach a schedule seems to be to plug all our tasks into time slots, then pull out our hair when we get derailed and it all falls apart. ![]() ![]() There’s more than one way to use a schedule.īefore we talk about the secrets that make schedules work and the results we can get from them, we need to get clear on what a schedule is and is not. If you hate the thought of schedules, if you’ve tried a homeschool daily schedule and it didn’t work, I have three secrets that I hope will cause you to reconsider and try again – in a new way. One thing we learn as soon as we try to live by a written schedule is that we are not actually in control. I mean, can I schedule diaper blowouts and my doorbell ringing and the toddler pulling an open bag of powdered sugar onto herself? Where does that go in the schedule? Schedules get a negative reaction in the homeschool world, and I totally get why. Does the word schedule make you break out in hives? Do you picture yourself harried and deflated at the end of a day on a homeschool daily schedule? Maybe for you, like me, that’s a vivid memory, not a theoretical picture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |