Our Schedule

So now I have the supplies, it’s time to start planning and gathering everything I want to do. I’m a Type A planner that always feels better with a good plan going in. I’m always up for flexibility and change in the spur of the moment, but I need a plan to reference when things change. I started with making a simple list of of the various curriculum we will be using.

I’m a big fan of time blocking, but we have multiple events outside of our house to account for. This coming year, we have our STEAM coop, coop art class, and science with a friend family.. My first pass at scheduling our day began with the outside items. From there, I came up with this basic schedule:

Next, I broke the week schedule down into days to better see if everything would fit. Arthur’s schedule is set and I am still tweaking Quentin’s schedule. I primarily use Roam to accomplish my day to day planning.

My next step was to create an overview calendar with our big themes. I used index cards cut into smaller pieces laid out on my desk so I could see everything at once and move things around. Very low tech solution, but sometimes paper really is better.

I was having trouble remembering if I was including all the pieces, so I created this weekly checklist to make sure. I’m certain that I will be tweaking this as the semester progressed. Right now this is what I have… (after taking this picture, I added Cooking and Q STEM to the checklist).

My last big planning step is to create very detailed lesson plans including videos, books, and details. This will be my second year using a special note talking app called Roam. I’ve been actively using Roam to collect all my notes, lesson plans, scheduling, and other miscellaneous items. (Also, you can see from the sidebar that I use Roam for a wide range of projects, not just homeschooling.) I’m still exploring the various tools on Roam and I’m sure that my planning with get more advanced and efficient as this year goes on. This screenshot is the start of our first week.

And that’s it! My planning and scheduling process seems very complicate but most of it is prep work before the year begins. Once we start, I mainly use the paper planner as reference and work inside Roam for the day-to-day planning. As usual, I tweak the process as I go along but this is my starting place.

We’re officially starting our homeschool adventure the first week of August. Starting August 8th, I’ll post a weekly wrap-up. I hope to do weekly updates highlighting our highs and lows on this journey.

Next up on the TBR pile: