I feel like I should put "Easing In" into quotation marks.
This year, my oldest is in Ambleside Online Year 7. I also have a Year 5 student, a Year 3 student, and an extremely eager Kindergartner. Add in a seven-month-old and you may begin to grasp the chaos here.
Planning was a special challenge this year. I had gotten into a scheduling groove over the last few years, but babies and schedules don't mix, at least not at my house. I have had to regress to a routine. Don't get me wrong, I loved my easy-going routines when all my children were little. But I find it hard to get all the work done (without taking all day) now that my children are getting older.
I ended up with a loose plan, inspired by the schedules at Piney Woods Homeschool. I can be fairly inflexible about my plans, but this year I decided beforehand that I would keep tweaking every week until the days were going fairly smoothly. Each child has their AO schedule (order modified slightly and colour coded) plus a sheet of paper with their "Daily Independent Work" and "Work With Mama" lists. The idea is that everyone gets started on their independent work while I spend time with each one, youngest to oldest.
My Year 7's list looks like this (the colours refer to the way I've colour-coded his AO schedule):
Daily Independent Work (about 2 1/2 hours)
Enrichment Narration (purple): 15-20 min
Math 30 min
History Narration (red): 30 min
Copywork 10 min
Science (green) 20 min (Narration OR Science Journal or Nature Journal Entry)
Piano Practice 15 min
Narration (blue) 20-30 min
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All of this work should be done before doing computer time (alternate Duolingo and Typing and Coding practice)
Work with Mama (about 2 hours) (I expect an increase in independence in some of these areas over the year, but for now I need to be close by, anyway. Most of this is done at the same time as his Year 5 brother, so I "kill two birds with one stone".)
Poetry 10 min
Writing 20-30 min
Written narrations each week will be done on
-New Testament
-One reading from red or blue category
-One reading from green category
-One current events topic from the past week
Fridays will be a fun writing exercise (Bravewriter).
Shakespeare/Plutarch/Beowulf (alternating) 20 min
Dictation/Grammar (alternating) 20 min
Latin/French/Grammar of Poetry (alternating) 30 min
Map Drill 10 minutes once per week
News and Current Events story read and discussed at lunch
I also have a list of things they can choose to do in the afternoon, hoping to get to each item about four times per 12-week term.
Drawing Lesson (YouTube or from a book)
Microscope Activity, or field work from Signs and Seasons
Piano Lesson
Composer Study (YouTube)
Shakespeare Play (YouTube...we watch as far as we've read that week.)
Nature Journaling
Nature Walk
Painting Lesson (YouTube or from a book)
Baking Lesson
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Of course, his is the longest list. AJ(5), who also insists on his own list, has:
Poetry 5 min (A Child's Garden of Verses)
Miquon Math 10 min (we play with Cuisenaire rods and casually talk about math concepts that come up.)
Reading Time 10 min (I read him a story. Pinnochio is the current one.)
Learning to Read 5 min (He is learning to read three-letter words. I wouldn't push if he wasn't ready, but he is. Very.)
I spend time with AJ first. This fills his love tank so he is more happy to go off and play on his own when he's done.
I decided to "ease in" this week. I gave the boys their back to school presents on Monday morning (school supplies that somehow seem much more special for being wrapped up), and we started with everyone doing math plus one reading and narration. Somehow this managed to fill the whole morning, so I felt a bit of trepidation about the whole plan.
Tuesday was awful. But then, Day 2 is always terrible. I tried to have everyone work through their Daily Independent Work lists. Again, this more than filled the morning, and this was WITH the baby having a wonderfully long morning nap.
Wednesday morning I had to go to the doctor for some bloodwork. When I came back, everyone was working on their lists. I quietly started the "work with Mama" lists, youngest to oldest. It went really, really well! My oldest did not complete his independent list, but I was happy with what we accomplished.
Thursday morning I got up at 7:00 and found SA(12) doing his math. We hit it out of the park that day. Everything was done by lunch.
And then came Friday. It was a bit like Day 2 again. SA was extremely stressed about getting everything done...so much so that he developed some hives. (He is a conscientious ISTJ who will put a lot of pressure on himself to follow the plan as written.) I will have to keep an eye on this.
So we had two good days out of five, though every day had things to be thankful for. I'll be tweaking a bit this weekend, but not hugely yet. I have to give us all time to settle into some sort of flow first. I will make a better (slightly simpler) checklist.
I took time to count three things I was thankful for every day. Here are some of my favourites:
-MM(8) fell in love with "Big Joe Mufferaw" (a Stompin Tom Connors song scheduled on Ambleside Online's Canada page.)
-Basic Christianity by John Stott seemed to touch a chord with SA(12). This was a personal substitution I made in the curriculum when I was unable to get How to Be Your Own Selfish Pig for a reasonable price. I think I've made a good choice there.
-Writing time went very well this week. This made me happy because I've decided that writing (written narrations, copywork, dictation) is going to be a particular focus this year. I saw some good advice as I was planning my year: "Choose one thing to do really well, and let everything else be good enough." Writing is that thing this year. Everyone had really good attitudes about it, and did really well with focusing on putting their ideas on paper without worrying too much about getting all the spelling and grammar correct. (This is a challenge we've been working on for a while, and we seem to have made a leap forward since last school year.)
