Scheduling Again

This is my messy morning schedule I scribbled out while I was at the beach Thursday. Cindy Rollins' talk at the AO At Home Conference in Indiana this summer about her precious moments with the kids in the mornings re-inspired me to look at my scheduling again. We're starting school Wednesday this week and spreading the first week over one and a half weeks so we're not rushed with the holiday and starting off in that mode. 

It's a two-week rotation. The kids are now in YR8, YR6, and YR2 and we have a 4yo preschooler who joins in the mix. I started by making one big list of all the things we'll be doing together, and then I jotted down approximately how long it will take for each - Poetry 10 minutes, Shakespeare 25 minutes, etc.

Once I had a list, I made up the schedule below of two weeks (Thursday is nature study so we don't gather.) Then I filled in the slots - some things are done daily, others once a week, others once every two weeks. My YR2er can play while we do things like Plutarch, but she'll be there overhearing it all since we're in a small space.

I'll pretty that up and print it for the kids and all of us will have a copy so it's predictable. The kids will also each have their own daily list of things to do - just like the one pictured in this post, but with much fewer things in the top section since those are now mostly being done in our morning schedule together. 

From there, I need to know what to do with each person for the rest of the day so I'll have a master schedule that looks like this one, but updated since the morning schedule will replace the 9am to 10:30am time slot. The rest of the day will look pretty similar with math, phonics, and readings with my younger two.

How about you? Has your schedule changed this year?