Ready, Set, GO!

It's the first week in July and in our home that means the start of the new school year.  I have spent the last month planning for this week and I'm sure the week will go nothing like I planned but here's what I've done to prepare.

First - Organize!  I read in an article on TOS (on their new handy dandy Free App) that the best way to get your kids to keep their space organized is to let them have a say in HOW it is organized.  We've tried a lot of "systems" in the past, but they were all MY ideas.  I realize now that their brains may not organize things the same way I do and when they have a say they are more likely to take ownership.

In order to start, we had to find their desks. they've been buried under my junk and their's over the last month.  With that done, I took out the new tools I had for them to choose from and discussed how they wanted to use them.

I offered them the choice of stacking their subjects on their desks, in the cabinet or in the extra magazine folders I had.  Both chose the folders, and both chose to keep them on their desk not on the adjoining book shelves. 

Next we discussed which colors they wanted and where they wanted to post their schedules.  I had purchased these dry erase "Wall Pop Calendars".  This is not their intended purpose but I hope it will work well.  They each have one square for their morning work and one for their afternoon work.   That will help my progression to a Charlotte Mason approach by limiting them to five subjects morning and afternoon and give me the flexibility of mixing up which subjects to do and when.

I made sure the both had their own rulers and timers on their desks to stop delays in finding them during school work time.

For certain subjects with a lot of loose papers I made them labeled binders.  For these same subjects I loaded the teachers manuals to my ipad as PDF; instead of printing them out or having to read from my computer.  This allows me to carry them around easily and switch quickly between subjects and children.  Specifically, I did them for Map Trek IV: Ancient (which came in a PDF) and KISS Grammar (which came in a Word Document that I converted to PDF).  I may also add my History Curricula as a PDF, but I'm still making many changes and I will most likely have to make hard copies and edit as we go along.
 

For the children, I went ahead and bought them "Student Planners" from a Well Planned Day.  I have always kept their activity logs on my computer but that was becoming cumbersome towards the end of last year.  I thought about creating something on my own, then decided this would be easier and I think better in the long run.  I am using the "Month At a Glance" for all their extra activities, ie. horseback riding, swimming, piano, baseball, etc.  I'm using the "Week at a Glance" pages for them to log what they do each day on the left and what books they read on the right. The planner only came with one page for books read and that would never do with my voracious readers.  This is going to take some time for them to take full ownership but I think it will be a great lesson in responsibility.  I'm giving them flexibility with recording as well.  Lance likes to write everything down from his schedule in his planner at the beginning of the day and check them off as he completes them.  Jared prefers to write them down in the planner as he completes them.

Second - Distraction.  Titus has not napped since he was 18 months old.  However, it has been clear for a long time he needs to.  The weekend before school we decided to initiate the quiet hour (or two) each day.  As it turns out he's ended up falling asleep 2 of the first seven days.  I do this around 2pm when I put Amber down for her afternoon nap.  On the weekends the boys use this time to read quietly for pleasure.  During the week I am using this time for the subjects I need to instruct them in without interruption, ie. anything with a read aloud element such as history.  I'm pleased with how it is working out.  Titus has been a little resistant some days but I think he'll get the hang of it and its imperative for Lance and Jared to have this uninterrupted time with me.  In the mornings, I am also bringing Titus upstairs when I put Amber down for her morning nap to read books or work on his numbers/letters on his iPad.  In the past, when I leave him downstairs, he interrupts the boys and they don't complete much.  In the mornings, the reward is one on one time with me if he can play/read quietly while I put her down.  

That's "the how" of the plan to implement our new year.  If the first week is any indication, I think we may actually have something that will work this year.  The boys say they really like the AM/PM schedule because "we can play in the morning when ever we are done and the same in the afternoon".  If they like it, we are much more likely to succeed. 

BTW, I only worked up to six subjects a day so far.  I'm easing them back into a full load.  Ironically our summers are much busier than the school year and we may have to wait for our friends to go back to school until we try a full load.

In the next post, I'll list out "the what" of the plan.