I was all fired up about how we were going to get so much book work done during the cold, winter months. It’s been in the 70s. 🙂 We’re playing outside for hours on end, which is way more important than some math and grammar lessons! When the weather gets cold we’ll get back to that textbook stuff.

I try each semester to review and revise our schedule so here’s what we’ve got starting the end of this month when our activities resume post-“winter” break. We don’t actually have a “schedule” because most of these things aren’t tied to a specific time, except outside of the home activities. This just reminds me and the kids of the rhythm of our days.

* Get up, get dressed, make your bed, make sure your room is picked up.
* Breakfast, then chore time (and EVERYONE helps clean up for 15 minutes – breakfast dishes, start laundry, anything left from last night.)
(1)
* Kit leaves for work after family prayer, we start exercising (yoga, big muscle movement stretches) and then circle time.
* Lessons, with me usually nursing at some point in here. The little kids are doing various busy activities. They’ll snack on fruits and veggies while they’re working/playing. Lessons are maybe 2 hours between the four kids? Three if we’re distracted.
* Clean up from lessons, lunchtime, clean up meal stuff.
(2)
* Storytime (read book together, picture book for little kids and chapter from novel with all of them.) Then quiet time – they all have to be in their rooms for quiet reading. Miss O’s our only napper now so this is ideally when she naps and I get my scripture study and lunchtime.
* Specials – art, music, literature, history, science.
(3)
* Snack & playtime.
* Kit home! Dinner prep, clean up from play stuff.
* Dinner, dishes clean up.
(4)
* Family time
(5)
* Bedtime routine – snacks, pjs, teeth, scriptures and prayer, stories
* Bed for kids, grown up time!

(1) Fridays right after breakfast we head out for swimming for an hour, which bumps things back. Other days we have various therapies that may delay this.
(2) Monday through Thursday this is staggered depending on therapy schedules.
(3) Thursdays is co-op and Fridays we often have playdates in the afternoon. Other afternoons there may be special library activities.
(4) Tues, Wed, Thurs we have an early dinner because of PE, scouts, and activity days.
(5) Evenings can be changed due to meetings for various family members!

All of this can be changed if we have family we’re going to see, a doctor visit, etc. But whenever possible if we’re home we try to stick to this, and I can see what a difference in makes for the kids to have some sense of consistency and routine. Each of them has a card on the dry erase board that lists their school assignments for each day so when it’s time for lessons they already know what books to grab and where to get started. It’s still a learning process for us, but we’re getting the hang of it!

To give a rough timeline breakfast is around 7am, lessons start around 9:30am, lunch is noon, snack is 2:30ish, dinner is 5pm (earlier Tue/Thur), bedtime routine is 7pm and they’re all asleep (except C) by 8pm.

If it’s a nice day in the winter we ditch lessons and play outside instead. If we’ve got friends visiting, we just skip work for that day. We set it up so that we only need to really do lessons 3x a week so we get at least two freebies a week.