I am a frequent lurker and occasional poster on the Sonlight Forums, a great place to talk with other homeschool parents about, well, everything from academics to sleep patterns (zzzz's!) and anything in between. Most of *my* brilliant ideas are from great parents there (the dumb ideas are mine alone!).

I got a new idea - well, stole an new idea! Thought you might like to steal it too... We always seem to run out of time before we get to art, science, music, foreign language etc, this new schedule makes sure everything that is important to us gets done. It is called a "Loop Schedule". I wrote out all the daily must do's - Bible, Math, Reading etc and when those are done we begin the loop. In the loop we get to the neglected areas - sometimes one or two a day, sometimes more. Today the next loop item was art. I am a fan of art, I just do not like to 'deal' with the mess! But alas it was next, Cuyler took the initiave, he is such a planner and scheduler - he thrives on that stuff. He pulled out the paints and paper and supervised AND cleaned up while I was working with Catherine doing math.

Here is what our "loop" looks like:

Daily:

Bible

Math

Independant Reading

Workbooks

German

Loop:

History

Art

Read-Aloud

Music

Science

Spelling

PE

Flash-Master (math flashcard machine)

I keep the schedule posted on the wall in a page protector - the kids just use a dry erase marker to check off what they have finished. We are getting so much more done every day!