Rethinking our Charlotte Mason year - my schedule

Today I’m going to share with you my homeschool schedule.  This schedule reflects a general flow to our days rather than a we-do-this-at-this-time kind of schedule.  Also, at this point I have only one student - an almost 7 year old first grader.

I based this schedule off of the PNEU time tables.  I mainly looked at what was scheduled in the morning for form I students and for how long.  My schedule is tweaked, of course.  If you haven’t explored Nicole’s posts on scheduling, I encourage you to do so.

	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5
Morning Time
5	Poetry	Poetry	Poetry	Poetry	Poetry
15	Bible	Bible	Bible	Bible	Bible
10	Memory Work Hymn Poem	Memory Work Folk Song Psalm	Memory Work Hymn Poem	Memory Work Folk Song Psalm	Picture Study
Individual Lessons
20	Drawing	Handicraft	Drawing	Handicraft	Nature Journal
15	Math	Math	Math	Math	Math
15	History Great Americans	Lit Aesop	History 50 Stories	Lit Just So	Lit Blue Fairy/ Shakespeare
15	Reading Instruction	Reading Instruction	Reading Instruction	Reading Instruction	Reading Instruction
10	Nat History Pond & River	Geography Paddle	Nat History Burgess Bird	Object Lesson
10	Copywork	Copywork	Copywork	Copywork
10		Nat History		Geography
10	Spanish Salsa	Spanish Library	Spanish Salsa	Spanish Song

My grid tells me three things (as I outlined in my previous post).

1.  What to do – I have each subject plugged into a specific slot, along with a particular book for that subject, if needed.  So each week we will just get through what we can for that reading and continue where we left off the next week.  If we cannot read and narrate a whole chapter of Just So Stories, for example, no big deal, we'll just continue the next week.  Pressure off!  The books are in red type and are mostly taken from Ambleside’s year one list.  (I have made a change or two here and there.)

2.  How long to do each thing – The column on the far left has the suggested amount of time to complete each subject.  Again, I’ve made some tweaks here and there to best fit my child.  For example, on the time-tables copywork (or writing) was done for 20 minutes, but I’ve shaved that down to about 10 minutes.  We may take a little longer than the suggested amount of time for a particular subject, but never more than 20 minutes.

3.  What comes next – The grid shows the flow of subjects, i.e. what to do next.  I've tried to order the subjects so that there's some variety, and my child isn't doing the same type of work back-to-back, like two narrations in a row.

Also, it’s interesting to me how the PNEU schedules had drawing and handicrafts actually scheduled in the morning, rather than in the afternoon (which is where I would have a tendency to place subjects that fall under the category of "we’ll-get-to-them-if-we-can").  I think that shows the value placed upon those subjects.  (It makes me think of The Little Prince and how he lamented the fact that he was not taught to draw when he was a child.  Actually, lots to think about in that book in regards to childhood and what's most important in life.)

So that's a little bit of an overview.  I'll talk more about some details - books, morning time - of this schedule soon!