a word on scheduling

As lofty as my aspirations were with scheduling our first academic year of homeschooling, I will admit that I deviated not just a little from our schedule as I first created it.

Our daily 6th grade academic schedule looked like this:

M-W-F
- Latin 8:30-9:00 am
- English Spelling (Wordly Wise) 9:00-9:20 am
- English Grammar 9:20 am - 9:35 am
- Structured Reading (after brief break) 10:00 am - 10:30 am
- Writing 10:30 am - 11:15 am
- History & Geography (after lunch break) 12:00- 12:30 pm
- Logic 12:30 - 12:45 pm

Additional lessons:

- Violin lesson on Monday afternoons
- French on Wednesdays with Catherine ("homework" throughout the week)

T-R
- Science Internship on Tuesdays (4-6 hours) followed by Math at home
- Science curriculum on Thursdays with "homework" for the rest of the week
- Math on Thursdays
- Art after Math for 30-60 min., depending on the instruction in the lesson taken from "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" curriculum
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- We covered "U.S. Government" on weekends.

P.E.

- Outside play
- Fencing
- Swimming
- Sailing

note: Sailing and outside play were free! We used our local YMCA for swimming classes, as they provided the most bang for my buck, and there are some fencing programs in NYC that are also inexpensive or totally gratis.

Eventually, though, we began waking up at around 9:00 am and not doing lessons until after that time. By then, though, we were on "automatic pilot" and we'd begin with Latin, with the remaining subjects covered by around 2 pm. If anything was NOT covered by 2 pm, we'd take a break anyway, and resume after dinner until whatever subject was completed. At first I felt very guilty for not continuing to "follow a schedule" but I realized that allotting a time to a subject as we went along was OK.

Deadlines were not always followed this year. I found myself modifying deadlines a lot. My solution to that for the coming year is getting A his own agenda, into which he will write his projects due by date order on a calendar for which he is totally responsible. I have decided to get him the most grown-up looking one from the Columbia University Bookstore.