Until the last few months, our school days were fairly free flowing. My 1-year-old son napped twice a day, leaving those hours free to spend "doing school" with my daughter (currently in 1st Grade). Now my son is 2 and the morning nap has gone away, making it a bit more difficult to fit in all that we used to. That is where making a loose schedule for the day has come in handy.


The biggest pluses I've found from this kind of loose schedule is that my daughter is more motivated to finish her work and I find myself nagging less for her to complete her studies. Part of the motivation for my daughter is that she has to finish everything to move on to the next item. For example, we have a morning snack at 10:00 each day. She doesn't get a snack until she has finished the items on the schedule before 10:00. Same with lunch, afternoon snack and supper. She is highly motivated by food! :-) I've also built in playtime and computer time for her, as the rewards for completing her work early.

Having all the subjects laid out keeps us more on track. And it's a loose schedule because it's flexible. At any point we can add or subtract items. And I didn't want our day broken down to specific 15 minute increments - that is just too restrictive and wouldn't work for us. So there are some times mentioned to keep us on track, but we don't spend exactly 15 minutes a day on math, 15 minutes on phonics, etc. It's much more loose than that. Loose and flexible. If we have morning errands to run, we can move things around or do what I refer to as "school lite" (a half day of studies).

No doubt we'll have to make changes as the years go by, but this is a glimpse into our current homeschooling days.

Schedules - they work for me!