The schedule cards have been a huge, HUGE hit. Each child has the card with their name and week’s lessons on it (language, math, etc – it’s subjects, not specific assignments.) I put a magnet on the back of each and hung it on our dry erase board where we have days of the week and any special events going on or appointments. I also list who has a date that week with Mom or Dad, and any notes for the day. We try to have the menu, too, but that’s a work in progress.

We also added a checklist on the board for their morning routine (which they have posted in their bedroom.) They know when they come out they need to be dressed, have rooms clean and beds made and then it’s chores, breakfast, and lessons. They know the bedtime routine perfectly, they correct us if we skip any mistake, but the morning routine seems to be something we all forget. 🙂

So after breakfast/chores when they have a tendency to wander off and play in the sunroom or read a library book (which is totally fine!) I can remind them to make sure they get their card done before lunch. We sit down for circle time (when I remember, I’m so bad about that lately) and I do the lessons that need my help with the younger kids but C is getting really independent and mostly needs me just to read his spelling words or help him remember how to do an outline for something he’s read when he’s working on his writing assignments. (Which are also very, very vague. Read something and write a paragraph about it. Once a month he has to turn in a one page paper about a topic he picks and I help him with outline that and formatting.)

The point being I get distracted, believe it or not. 😀 So the cards help me remember which child needs help with which lesson each day.

The other new discovery is that if they ask for screen top (laptop, Wii, movie) they know they cannot have it before their card is completed and chores done. Lessons are getting done faster than ever!

But to help ensure they don’t finish lessons in 30 minutes and spend 3 hours on various screens we are starting a token system. AFTER the card is done they get tokens, each worth 15 minutes of screen time. No tokens before cards are done, once cards are done they can redeem tokens from the little jar. If they are watching someone else play a game that still counts towards their own screen time (it makes me crazy when one child is playing a game and the others sit there watching, paralyzed by the magic rays of the screen.) Educational games count towards screen time, and the iPad and iPhone and Wii and laptop. It all counts!

They also know that tokens can be lost based on my whims, the tokens are a privilege and not a right.

We’ll see how this goes but I’m optimistic… they seem to like it thus far and the cards with individual lessons has been a huge success in giving them more accountability and keeping us all on track. It’s more concise than the schedules we kept in binders and it’s constantly visible on their board, both important to me actually using them.

Along with this my “record keeping” has really gone out the window. Since our language, history and math are all a book series it’s easy to keep tabs on who has completed which and where they are in the lessons. For literature we’re keeping a list of books we read as a family and C records what he reads individually in his binder. For science, art, and music we’re not keeping a record. (We’ll work on that for science, obviously we need to make sure we keep some idea of what’s not covered yet/what we taught.) We just do projects and readings and explore.

Adding that to the agenda – figure out a more concrete way to keep tabs on science. Even if it’s sticking to a theme per year. Once they are older that will matter more – right now I don’t think it does.