Christ is risen! Happy Easter…day 7.

I combined the schedule this week as a trial and the boys really like it.  They are both getting a lot more attention, and I am spending a lot less time backtracking, correcting, and having they do thing over again because I am right there are they do it.  This feels so much more like a CM education.

I started thinking about next year.  Oddly enough, it is the only year, ever, that I would not be able to combine any children using the 3 year cycles.  Ds#3 is still in kindergarten, ds#2 would be in the first cycle while ds#3 would be in the second cycle.  I need to first, pray, and second, realize that next year is an odd year and so I am going to do odd things to make it work so I just have to get over it.  What that will be remains to be created, LOL.

With the schedule going so much smoother, and with more time made available because of combining work, I decided to try writing a master schedule covering all the subjects as fully as I would like.  Well, I packed up all the 20 minute slots from 8 am until noon and didn’t have any literature reading scheduled, nor the PACE program.  Something is wrong and I need to look long and hard at my choices.

One major problem is that I am fitting school into 4 days, since we spend 1 day a week at co-op.  Co-op classes may or may not replace something on our home schedule, depending what is offered.  I consider it all extra-curricular.  The solution would be afternoon homeschool time (which I have not been very good with so far) or Saturday morning homeschool.  These are distinct possibilities.

I also noticed I scheduled 40 minutes 4 days a week for Noeo, plus 1 slot for nature reading, 1 slot for earth studies, and an afternoon slot for a nature hike.  O.K. so we are heavy on the science!  I really should do basic physical geography with both ds#1 & 2, and then move into countries and cultures in the second cycle, rather than doing both simultaneously.  Hmmm, maybe that would be good for next year.  And I’m reducing Noeo to 3 days, too.

We are studying Italian, plus ds#1 is doing Latin.  I think I will put off formal Latin for ds#1 and stick to all the kids memorizing prayers in Latin since they really enjoy doing that.

I am doing 2 slots of US History and 2 slots of World History every week.  Many programs go every other year with this, but, honestly, I really don’t want to change this.  I’ll consider the other options first.

Finally, as much as I love CHC’s Catholic Speller and Language of God, they are really just so much busy work.  I need to focus on penmanship and written language, so learning by doing rather than learning concepts and choosing the right answers.  This is new territory for me, so we’ll see how this works.  Maybe I should dust off the Total Language Plus just to pull some ideas out of them.  Maybe I can somehow integrate the PACE material with this!

Thinking by blogging can be so inspiring!