I’m preparing for the addition of a fourth “student” at the end of this summer, adding Miss E into our lesson rotation as she’s turning FIVE. AAAAH! So I made these up with magnets on the back to hang on our dry erase board:

Since we school year round (and only need 180 days per year per Texas requirements) we don’t do an intensive week. We like the flexibility of adding field trips and play dates and days off when the weather is beautiful and we want to go explore outside. Here is our newest schedule and each child has a card with their work written on it. I’ll refer to the master plan but I told them each is responsible for completing their work on that card each day and I’m available to help/teach/instruct/answer questions between 9 and 11am. 🙂 Then I make lunch and we have quiet time and then in the afternoon we do specials (art, music/piano, literature, history, science) so they need to be done with the basics before lunch. (Which is absurdly easy, they can knock their lessons out quickly and get back to their fun reading and playing and adventures if they focus.)

I’m excited! I like that we’re passing more individual responsibility to kids (C & M) as they pick their own research topics per month and such. The middle ones (B & E) obviously I’m still sitting down with and giving lots-o-guidance but the big ones are really motivated to take more charge of their own studies and we’re here to help facilitate that.

In addition to the academics we do have therapy, OT, speech, PE, swimming, activity days, cub scouts, and co-op. Plus our various playdates or appointments that may throw things off, thus the beauty of a flexible schedule!

P.S. C and I are trying to figure out what grade he would be in if he attended school. If he started according to local guidelines he would have begun K in the fall of 2007 and would be entering the 4th grade. M would have started the next year and would be entering 3rd grade, B would be entering 1st and E entering K. So my boy-girl pairs are a year apart in grades and there’s 2 years between sets. J starts fall 2013 and O starts 2015 because of her fall birthday (but we’ll start her 2014 and keep them a year apart in grades, too. And because it’s easier for me to remember. Boy-girl grade apart, two years, boy-girl grade apart, two years, boy-girl grade apart. Which means when we start our next pairing we’ll have 7th, 6th, 4th, 3rd, 1st, K. When O starts.)

Not that ANY of these grades actually mean anything, it’s just we still get asked what “grade” our kids are in to give people a rough idea of development/skill level.