Peter and I often spend some time during Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening planning our coming week.  First of all we need to have an overview of our own week, then we confer with each other which may mean making a tweak or two in our own plans.

I have come up with a short list of spheres of relationships that I want to ensure that we cover each and every week (when we can).  This will be a check list of sorts as Peter and I discuss our coming week.

Marriage – date night

Children – education / discipleship

Christian fellowship – one on one relationships and Bible Study

Friends and Community contacts

Recreation as a family and as an individual

Business

I haven’t written these as a priority list (other than our date night!) – the ebb and flow of life and seasons will create priorities enough but what this list does is makes us consider each of the spheres of relationships that are important to us and makes us ensure that we being diligent in all that we set our heart towards.

Today being Sunday Peter and I have spent time planning, actually, we spent most of the afternoon talking about not only the coming week but the coming month.  January is going to be a time where our family can work together on various projects though we hope to take breaks every so often and enjoy the beauty and fun of the wet season – rainy days and waterfalls!

We plan to:

• declutter every room and cupboard in the house
• declutter the shed
• declutter the verandas
• various building and maintenance projects such as putting legs on our coffee table and finishing the top level of the cubby
• prune the garden, take clippings for more plantings, plant grass runners
• write reports on the children’s education and plan 2010 education goals/plans

So we are going to be very busy!  In talking our plans over with our children we made the distinction between busy and productive.  We tend to see busy as a negative thing but really if we are busy doing productive things that is a good thing – it is the busy that brings stress that we should avoid.  So often the busy that brings stress is when we are busy doing good things not the best things – we need to be able to discern which is which and go for the best things.  So our focus, our theme for January is Productivity and our goal is Order. 

Teaching my children to cook has been a challenge to me.  I struggle having to share my kitchen and it is something I have been overcoming for years.  Each year I get a little better at it.  This year I decided it was time to really focus on the children’s cooking skills.

Our chore roster has one child responsible for an area of the house, morning, noon, and night, for a whole week.  So I decided that the person who was on Kitchen could have the ‘night’ session off and become my cook’s helper instead.  This has worked a treat.

Each term (or there abouts) I get the kids to choose a main, a dessert and a baking recipe and those recipes become the primary focus in learning to cook – at the end of the term I want them to be cooking that recipe by themselves confidently.

When we work on their new recipe it takes about three times before they take it on as their own. 

• First time they watch me cook it and they just help with getting the ingredients or anything else I need,
• then the next time we cook it they do it with me watching and
• then the third time they can generally do it themselves with me out of the kitchen.

There have been a few recipes where they feel they need that extra instance of me supervising.  So by the end of a term (10-12 weeks) They have mastered the recipe and it goes in their own cook book.

The other aspect of being cook’s helper is being on hand to help whenever I am cooking or need something done in the kitchen.   This way they learn their baking and dessert recipe as well as extras along the way.

So as the year progresses they end up being competent with a collection of recipes.  I keep these on my master “Cook’s Helper List”.  Each child has 5 columns:

• Learning (I list any recipe – main, dessert, baking, salad, etc…)
• Mastered Mains (once they’ve mastered it, the recipe is recorded in the relevant list – this helps me when I’m writing my menu plan)
• Mastered Salads
• Mastered Desserts
• Mastered Baking

I use this master list when writing my menu plan.  On days that we are home and I have time to teach or help them I choose from the “learning” list.  On days that are flat-out busy I choose from the “Mastered” list and they do most of the dinner prep freeing my time so I can do something else at that busy time of day.

Next year

• Josh needs to learn to use the food processor in making salads and look at baking a little more
• Jessica is ready to work on preparing a whole meal not just a main proportion of it.  E.g. She is able to cook the main, prepare the salad/s and a dessert so our focus will be on timing (getting it to the table), not so much the cooking.  I’ll also start looking at menu planning with her.
• My goal for Nomi is to increase the number of recipes she is confident with
• Daniel really missed out a fair bit this year so next year my goal is to make sure he gets a look in as well.

Half way through this year we started calling our independent, discipline studies Daily Diligences.  This emphasised two aspects – One, it happened daily, and two, it required diligence.  This has turned out to be a good vocab choice as our younger two, Nomi 12 and Daniel 10 learn to work independently on these few subjects.

Many years ago I started calling these subjects Discipline* Subjects because these subjects needed daily practice.  (*I think this word came from Sally Clarkson’s Educating the Whole Hearted Child).  These subjects vary from student to student and from year to year depending on what is important.  Math, Reading, Writing, Typing, Foreign Language, Music have been our mainstay choices.

There are a few benefits of having this habit established

1. They can work independently on something beneficial when you have to work with another child, or answer the phone, or leave the room.
2. They can work on these subjects on days that you feel totally distracted by life and you know they are still doing important stuff.
3. You can use these subjects during busy seasons to maintain order and focus in your day – one hour of focus time each day brings surprising calm and order to an otherwise busy, hectic season.

Next year I intend to use this independent, discipline (daily diligence) time spot to have one on one conference with the other children.  In one hour I maybe able to talk to all children, or I may only get to speak with one – but it will be a daily time where I can catch up and talk to the kids about their work, their goals and whatever else pops up.

One of the things I mention in my “what worked well this year” list, and on my Assignment Sheet post, is family workshops – what are they?

During the year it dawned on me that Mondays are our best day because I’m all fired up and ready to go based on the prep I’ve done over the weekend.  (Presuming that is that I got that prep done!)  So I decided to use that energy and focus on the subjects that are important but often get left out because of lagging energy.  I call them workshops because they are often interactive and I have to be there teaching as opposed to encouraging independent work.  Depending on the subject depends on which child joins me for the lesson – sometimes we have all four, sometimes just the oldest two, or maybe three come together, occasionally I have one-on-one time as well.  If a child is not involved in a workshop they work independently on their own studies.  This year writing, creation science, money, Auslan and living math were our subjects for Workshop day.

Workshop subjects are also things that we study with other homeschool families either as a few families getting, which we do for Contenders of the Faith and Keepers of the Home every fortnight, or as a Homeschool Co-op which we do once a month.  In the past we have done a unit study together with another family (Dinosaurs) which was short term or a public speaking course which was long term in that it lasted for a whole year.

The other style of workshops we have in our home is for creative projects.  We’ve only done this a few times but it is something that I’d like to do more often now as the kids are older.  We keep dinner early and simple such as a bowl of soup or we have a veggie platter so we can nibble throughout the evening.  Our goal is to start on creative projects as early as we can and our fellowship is around our creative projects instead of the dinner table.  Sometimes we listen to an audio story, sometimes we have background music and we talk on and off throughout the evening.   Doing dinner this way means we can get a couple of hours of creativity happening and yet not be a late night.

I like the term workshop because it denotes a short season.  As adults we would do a workshop on quilting for example and it isn’t like doing a course that lasts for the whole year – it is a short burst of commitment, to learn a specific skill and then we are left to practice that skill.  That is the kind of idea behind my workshop subjects. 

I’ve had lots of links to share but they’ve all gone ‘walk-about’ so here are a few from the last few days.

Prepare to be a guest in someone else’s home – though this doesn’t apply to us this year I still thought it was a very good list and I’d like to share it with you all.

Here’s a great Squidoo Lens on Workboxes – we don’t use workboxes but she sure makes it tempting!!  (note:  The only reason we don’t is that our system of lists and diaries is working well to keep Daniel focused throughout the day though we used similar types of systems when he was younger.)

Robyn from Heart of Wisdom shares about 15minute clean ups - we call this Blitzing.   I like these charts though that Robyn shares – giving a bit of a system to the Blitz.  Kids seem to work better when they know what to look for in a messy room – look for all the books, look for all the paper, all the toys, all the clothes.  I am going to customise these lists for our rooms that regularly need blitzing.

These days our house seems to be a buzz with political and philosophical discussions.  I’ve subscribed to two blogs to help me keep up.  I used feedblitz.com to subscribe to any blog/website I want to keep in touch with.  Feedblitz sends me an email whenever my subscribed sites update.  I find it easier to have these updates come to my email box instead of setting up a RSS feed.  Anyway back those to emails:

• Andrew Bolt
• Breakpoint by Chuck Colson

Another from Robyn from Heart of Wisdom as she talks about celebrating Christmas and the changes that have happened, and the reasons why, over the years.  I enjoyed Robyn’s honesty and the fact that she shows that these things are so often a journey.  12 Things I don’t like about Christmas

I’ve finally got my head wrapped around Josh finishing homeschooling and moving into university studies – he’s not there just yet but hoping to start some university units next year via Open University.

Our after lunch routine is 1.5 hours of quiet, individual, independent time. 

Quiet:  Quiet time has a two pronged purpose.  One is rest and the other is focus.  I find children get overstimulated with noise, busyness and choices.  A time of quiet helps to calm things down.  Unfortunately in this busy world we are not comfortable with quiet and yet it is in the quiet of the morning that our soul is restored – if we are busy busy busy we so often miss the still quiet voice of God.  Helping a child get use to quiet is a good thing.  (The ability to be quiet is also an issue of respect towards other people) 

Individual:  Our children need time where they can look after and develop their inner self and their unique self.    They too may need to rest or they may take the time to develop and work on the things that are a reflection of the unique them. 

Independent:  Our children need to be able to do things themselves.  They need to be able to entertain and teach themselves.  It is important that our children are happy with themselves and their own company.  This cannot be developed in a crowd - they need time alone.

So the purpose of this time is for the children to learn to rest, to focus, to process things, to learn things and to entertain themselves.

The flip side is that this is a time where I have 1.5hours of uninterrupted time for the things that I need.  (The rule is the children can come and get me if there is blood and no breathing!)  I may need rest or I may need to work on projects it is really up to me to determine how best to use this time.  The challenge is not to waste it!

Of course our children have had to be trained towards this and they haven’t always achieved 1.5 hours.  It started off with toddlers still having a day sleep, then it moved to nap time, then rest time, then reading on the bed time, and it grew from there.

Sometimes we seem to lose the skill altogether and we start a season of retraining.  Daniel was at this place at the beginning of the year.  He could just do 20min of focus by himself – just and it wasn’t all that consistent!  So we started stretching always keeping our eyes on our purposes.  I split the 20minutes he could do into two 10min blocks and taught him how to use the timer.  10 minutes of reading on his bed (he wasn’t reading reading so it is just looking at books), 10 minutes of playing with a toy he choose (this toy was taken into the bedroom at the beginning of this 20minutes.)

Once he could do 20minutes, moving from reading to playing by himself successfully, we stretched him to 30 minutes – two lots of 15 minutes.  Once he could do this well we moved him to 20 minute blocks, and so forth.  Now he has 3 blocks of 30minutes and he can transition from each block without me.  Next year I may bump this up to 4 blocks.  He is not ready to focus on one thing for longer than 30minutes. 

I have used many systems to keep myself and all my many roles and responsibilities organised over the years – I’ve used paper and digital systems.  This year I put it all together in one place and I call it “My Whole Life Diary”.

It started with SimpleMom’s daily docket, and has grown into my own system.  Here are the sections in my binder:

• A monthly calendar where I write every commitment that we have as individual’s or family
• My own ‘daily docket’ (I’ve tweaked Simplemom’s so it fits all my roles and responsibilities – things I want to remember ever day)  It has my daily routine on the left (which includes my cleaning routines) and on the right I have space to write reminders or to-do’s for training my children’s hearts, general to-do list, office work, cooking, teaching my children, and blogging.
• Homemaking and Business routines
• Menu planning and Shopping lists
• Homeschool overviews (only overviews and notes to self otherwise the binder gets too heavy!)
• Heart training notes
• Phone numbers
• Birthday / Celebration dates and plans

Keys to keeping myself organised:

• I set aside time each week to organise and plan my week.  I print off a weeks supply of my daily docket (each day of the week is different) and then take my calendar and transfer this week’s commitments to my daily planner.  I look at my homeschool plans and transfer realistic goals for our study times.  I look at our week and plan my menu accordingly (I can’t think of anything worse than planning a roast on a day that has me out and about all afternoon!)
• I try and review where my children are at – spiritually, morally, relationally, academically and with their practical skills and talents each month.  (Ideally this is one child a week)
• I don’t change my daily docket to suit my week.  Some weeks are just so far from the norm but I don’t change my daily dockets on my computer to reflect that.  They are a form or chart that reflects the norm.  On these crazy weeks or days I just write something up by hand.  These daily dockets, are simply a form that serves a purpose – they don’t have to look pretty.  I only change the daily docket when a new season of life happens and the norm changes.
• I do what I can and let the rest go!  As I have trained myself towards being organised I learnt very early on that there would be days (most days to be honest!) that I don’t get everything done that I plan to get done.  This is okay.  I’ve had to learn that it is okay!  I also learnt not to squeeze that undone project into tomorrow but rather find its best time – eg if Friday is dusting day, and it doesn’t get done, we don’t squeeze it in for Saturday, but rather leave it till next Friday but it becomes a priority then.  Of course there are things that we don’t get done that have to be put to tomorrow but not everything.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this system because it keeps all my roles organised – not just homeschooling, not just homemaking, not just parenting, not just business but each and every role I play gets a look in.

An Assignment sheet is simply all the work I expect (hope) my children to work through in a study block (6-10 weeks).  Each child has their own assignment sheet – for those children who are independent learners they monitor their study by using this sheet, ensuring they are keeping a balance of all their subjects (actually Jessica writes her own sheet and submits it to me for approval).  For younger students I keep a copy myself and monitor how they are going as the weeks progress.

I write sheets at the end of each block before we begin the next block (I use the word ‘study blocks’ instead of terms).  Depending on family life and how the student is going with the work, these sheets may be tweaked as we go along.  My purpose is to teach my children to be accountable and though I may need consequences if they have been slack I also realise that because homeschooling is all about taking life opportunities, often times we don’t have the same amount of study time as I had planned so their assignments get shuffled around with no consequences set – that is just life!

I use Excel to write these up, so there are lots of columns going down the page and along the top is a column for every week of our study block (6-10 weeks)
Down the left side is all the subjects that they study. I divide this up into categories

• Relationship (Bible, Character)
• Basic Skills (Discipline subjects - things that need practicing every day - math, reading, writing, typing, music, foreign language etc – this is different for each student)
• General Knowledge (History, Science, World View, etc... whatever they are learning)
• Workshop Subjects (these we learn together as a family, with the Homeschool co-op and friends)
• Delight Subjects (Subjects they choose for themselves or enhance their individual gifts and talents- this can be short term or long term)
• Reading List (this is prescribed by me - or approved by me) and infers a reading journal is kept as well
• Family Life – which includes family read alouds,
• Individual Pursuits (Productive Free time)

I then plot what work I expect to see finished in each week.

• Eg. I expect a balance of Bible and Character to be done over a month (5x Character, 15x Bible)
• math, writing, piano etc gets done 3-5 times a week (depending on the student),
• I plot in what history unit, or Science lessons need to be done,
• speech once a month,
• Keepers x2 month
• etc.....

If I keep the assignment sheets, then it becomes a part of my record keeping.

I have been away from my blog – and many other online activities – for 3-4 weeks now.  I needed a break and though I didn’t intend to stop blogging life took over and that is what happened.  Looking back, I’m kind of glad that is what happened.  Sometimes I think my blog world takes over my thinking – there is always the next blog post to write – and it was good to see that it just stopped.   Over the next few days or so I’ll post about what has been going on in my world.  It has been fairly crazy-busy! 

But in the meantime, I've been thinking over the last year - the things we've done well, the things I feel we could do better on, and the things that didn't happen at all!  It is good to review before setting forth and setting new goals and plans for next year.

These are the things that come to mind that have gone well in 2009, things that have worked for us:

• Nomi and Daniel have established the ability to do daily independent work.  Read Daily Diligences
  
• Josh and Jess have worked well with assignment sheets, I've used assignment sheets for Nomi and Daniel.  Read about our Assignment Sheets
  
• Monday was a Family Workshop day - this was the day I taught those lessons that we learnt together or in various configurations - writing, creation science, speeches, money, Auslan
  
• My main focus this year was teaching Daniel to read and though he isn't 100% there, there has been tremendous progress.  He started to write as well, often spending an hour or so writing in his free time. 
  
• Daniel established a habit of 1.5 hours of Individual time spent after lunch (where he doesn't interrupt me)  Read After Lunch Routine
  
• We scored well when I added to Nomi's discipline studies an art project each day.  She has explored various media and forms
• Joshua moved from History to Philosophy, completing Francis Schaeffer How Should we then Live DVD course
  
• We enjoyed Living Math stories and activities
  
• We began Institute of Excellence in Writing and have done several units, the kids use these tips and techniques in most of their writing.
  
• Jessica has done well at dress making (a Keepers project) she feels like she is 'getting it'
  
• I established 'Cooks helper' as a part of our daily chore roster. Consequently Josh, Jess and Nomi's cooking skills have improved greatly.
  
• My Whole Life Diary has been very beneficial in balancing all my roles and responsibilities this year.  Read a summary of my Whole Life Diary
  
• Nomi is now blogging and writing regularly
• list to be continued....
  

Things that I reflect on and think "we did not so well here"

• reading lists - though Josh and Jess do well at reading lists, Nomi struggled, she needed more involvement from me.
  
• Character – I have come to realise that this is a discipleship lesson - they need an older/wiser person to discuss this aspect of personal growth with.  Though Joshua studying it independently has had some success I believe doing it together will make more impact. 
  
• Nomi isn't as far along in her ability to research topics (though she is processing non fiction information better)
• Daniel still struggles with free time – still relies on too much screen time (or his desire is for too much screen time)
  
• How I wish we could get into Nature journaling (Check out Melissa’s blog - she says it well - just what I feel like)
• Josh and Jess Bible Study (though they studied other things that was unplanned but really good – I still want them to do the Wisdom unit from Heart of Wisdom)
• Activity Box for Daniel – Jessica and I made an activity box on the theme of Pirates with the idea of helping Daniel use his time wisely.  Unfortunately there were too many dependent activities - which was silly because the idea was for time he had to do by himself!
• List to be continued...
  

When Your Husband Isn't On Board