My Planning Tools for 2020-2021 :: Logbooks and Timetables

I have had some requests on Instagram to share a closer look at my logbook, so I thought I'd hop over here and pull together a post about my process this year. This is one of those topics it is much easier to blog about than to answer DMs about!

In the past, I have used different ways of organizing my plans, managing my days, and pre-reading. I have blogged about those strategies as well.

Here I'm going to share about what is working for us this year. Over the past couple years, I have changed my approach quite a bit -- and for the better! I have a few different tools I am using that have been very successful for us, even with seven students in three Forms and lots of littles alongside.

LOGBOOK

But for the past couple years, I have adopted the practice of a logbook, which is an idea straight from the PNEU that I have adapted for our family. Amy was the one who introduced me to the logbook -- she and I discussed the topic briefly over at Charlotte Mason Coast to Coast a couple years ago. (If you are a CMEC member, we went into logbooks in more depth during this year's Summer Planning Mini-Retreat, and we have plenty of examples on the Logbooks and Timetables page under Resources.)

Simply put, the logbook offers me a place to LOG the work we do in each lesson block and my reflections on that work (as needed).

This year, I am using two-page spreads for each 5-week session (half-term -- we do 10-week terms). Last year I tried to fit a full term on one spread and I didn't have enough room for notes, but the half-term seems to be just right.

I have spreads for Form 1 and 2 readings, Form 2 readings and work, Form 1 students, and family studies. This grid format allows me to see several weeks at a glance so that I can notice patterns, ongoing problems, and progress.

Here are a few filled-in examples from earlier this year:

I have my logbook open during the day so I can jot down notes as we go!

SCHOOL PLANNER

I also use my logbook for planning. I write up a weekly grid to work from based on each day's timetable, then sit down weekly to think through my plans for each slot.

blank and ready to go!

filled in for the week  (except special study -- I jot my plans there over the weekend)

I am doing less weekly pre-reading this year since I did so much over the summer. So I get out my pre-reading notebook to reference during this prep session, adding any important notes I have for myself and marking with a post-it any discussion points I want to bring up with my older kids during the week. (I just pull out my pre-reading notebook and work from there in those moments.)

My weekly prep time takes about an hour this year. I also do some related bedtime reading: the high school literature books, biographies, and religion reading that I didn't get to over the break.

At the end of each day, I look back over my plans and see what didn't get covered -- and I circle it. Sometimes I think we'll have time for an activity that we don't actually fit in the block. Sometimes we read a little less (or more!) than I had planned. I circle those things to remind me to consider them when I am making the next week's plans or to cover at Weekly Meeting, depending on what it is. (Sometimes I have a discussion point or side note I wanted to bring up with my high schoolers but forgot. That kind of thing I bring to Weekly Meeting on Friday to discuss there.)

This weekly grid is my brain during the week! I use it to direct my lessons for every Form, every day.

PRE-READING NOTEBOOK

I mentioned my pre-reading notebook above. I have shared about various ways I have kept my notes before.

This year, I had much more reading to do with the older kids in high school, so I decided to simplify my notebook practices. Instead of drawing and painting in my pre-reading commonplace and keeping another notebook with more logistical notes, I am just keeping one lined notebook this year for all of my notes. 

The first half has my book notes - main ideas, discussion points, ideas for lessons. 

The second half is a simple commonplace book -- just quotes.

I filled up most of this notebook over the summer, but there is still room for me to add for the books I am reading week by week or term by term.

This is now my reference book that I pull out weekly (at Weekly Meeting and my weekly planning time), whereas my logbook is my working notebook that I use daily.

In the past, my pre-reading notebook has been a creative project for me. But this year, I wanted to focus on commonplace-keeping and working in my Book of Centuries, so that is where I have been putting my reading-related notebook time.

LOGBOOKS FOR HIGH SCHOOLERS

My high school kids are actually keeping their own logbooks this year, so although I do keep my plans for them in my weekly spread, I do not log their work daily. I bought planners from Target that are set up with blank categories so that they could dedicate a column to each day of the week and just work down their timetable of subjects in order. I have them make note of Afternoon Occupations at the bottom of each column, and they have space on the side for them to make note of things they want to discuss at Weekly Meeting, goals for themselves, notes for online classes, etc. They have this logbook, their timetable, and their program, and they work through their days very independently! It has worked so smoothly for us.

Any notes that I want to keep about my high schoolers go right on my weekly spread (that right column has room for my general reflections). Or if there is an issue I need to troubleshoot, I just turn the page and brainstorm there! The notebook is set up like a bullet journal in that I don't have it all laid out in advance. This allows me a lot of flexibility in my record-keeping.

FAMILY TIMETABLES

I used to schedule our days to be very flexible, just carving out school blocks and fitting in whatever fit on a given day. I felt like that worked very well for the season I was in at the beginning, with more littles than school-aged kids. It also fit my personality -- I am one that tends to push too hard rather than not hard enough, so even though I didn't have a strict line-up for the day, we were always getting it all done. It was a good system for us.

But the past two years I have worked with a formal timetable for our lessons time and I LOVE it. I don't think I could school this many kids, have this many good conversations, hit all the "books and things," and still keep my sanity without it! I put a lot of thought into what our schedule should look like during the summer and then just follow it week by week. If I need to make a change -- if something isn't working or we want to try something new -- I just adjust it, print a new one, and go from there. I also review the timetable after each five weeks to see if it needs a refresh.

Since I have multiple Forms, I have a family timetable for each weekday. The stack is hung on the fridge and we flip to the right day each morning. 

My high schoolers each have their own timetable in their notebook. Their timetables are personal to them because they share books, so I often have them flip-flop subjects to accommodate that. But I still have them on our family chart so that I know roughly where they are in their day at any given time. And they join us for afternoon lessons, so I can see at a glance what time that will happen on any given day.

All that said, we do not always follow this exactly as scheduled. Right now, Emilia is napping in the morning and late afternoon and Damien naps mid-afternoon. So occasionally, I will swap the Form 1 and 2 kids' lesson block (12:30-3pm) and outside time -- we begin their line-up of lessons whenever she goes out and work straight for two hours. Then we pick back up when the older kids are scheduled to join us at around 2pm for our last few family subjects each day. But even when we change our beginning time, we still follow the order and length of these lessons, which keeps us all on track and ensures we have variety and balance!

The timetable takes away the effort of decision, holds me accountable, gives me peace in the moment, and helps our days with multiple students run smoothly. I don't have to think through whether one of my students will need a book while another student is already using it, or if I'll be available to hear a narration. All of that has been accommodated! And I can adjust during my reflection time when needed.

So that's a tour through my tools this year. Have you tried a logbook? Where do you like to keep your notes and thoughts for lessons, or your reflections on the day/term/year? I'd love to hear what methods work for you. :)

(And because I know you are going to ask: the robin's egg blue and navy notebooks below are hardcover XL classic moleskines in lined for the pre-reading notebook and dot grid for the logbook. I use my very favorite mechanical pencil, a black ballpoint, and a set of Staedtler Triplus Fineliners in these notebooks. There is some ghosting with the markers, but since I only use those to draw my grids (and opt for light colors anyway), I am fine with that. Pencil and ballpoint work fine on these thin pages, though. The thinness of the pages allows for a LOT of pages in just one small notebook, which I really like for this purpose. Links above are affiliate links. Thanks for your support!)

Our Weekly Meeting

Last month, I explained how I do my Weekly Planning + Pre-Reading, all in one session before the week begins.  If you haven't read that post yet, head over and check that out first -- I'll be referencing some of my planning steps as I explain this second pillar of my weekly process.  (You can also take a look at this year's general scheduling notes here for context.)

Today I'm going to talk about the second of my two weekly checkpoints that keep our homeschool humming along: our Weekly Meeting.

During my Weekly Planning session, I prepare my whole week: my Year 5 kids' work, my Form I kids' work, and my own personal tasks and goals.  The Weekly Meeting, on the other hand, is really just for my Year 5 kids.  They are largely independent in their lessons at this point -- I do roughly one reading and one 15-minute skill-work session (grammar, Latin, etc.) with them each day.  We also do quite a bit of work as a family (Morning Basket, fine arts, foreign language), and I listen to lots and lots of narrations from them. ;)  Everything else they handle on their own, with my guidance.

In the past, I was correcting and looking over assignments as they were finished.  So multiple times a day, I was stopping what I was doing to have a conversation about their work.  For a while, that wasn't a problem to anyone but me and my own addled mind.  But once I added a fourth student and started spending quite a bit of my time juggling between those two Form I kids, the Year 5 kids were often coming to me while in the middle of a homeschool task with the younger ones.  This not only disrupted my train of thought and action but also my young students'.  I also couldn't fit in those conversations during naptime, which was now primarily dedicated to Form I read-alouds.  There is nothing that gets me more frustrated as a teacher than a older kid coming in an interrupting my reading with a new student-narrator.  I treat those sessions as fairly sacrosanct and it throws off my rhythm.  But it wasn't my kids' fault, because that was when our check-ins had happened in the past.

I also needed a better way of keeping up with the needs, attitudes, challenges, and questions of my older students.  As we moved closer and closer toward independence, I found that we had fewer daily needs but more weekly needs -- and those needs were likely to fall through the cracks since they weren't as pressing.  My fifth grader wasn't sitting next to me to do his copywork anymore, but he still needed me to look it over, to talk about technique.  Another example: he was often narrating in the car on the way to the beach or while I was making dinner.  I'm mentally ready to hear at those moments but not necessarily mentally ready to discuss -- but I didn't want that part of the narration process to fall by the wayside just when they began to need it most.  I needed a way to manage those to-dos, something on the calendar to make sure my Year 5 students and I were getting the time together we needed.  But I also needed it to not take up bunches of tiny bits in my everyday, when they felt like interruptions rather than opportunities.

That is the story behind the Weekly Meeting, which I have found to be a very powerful tool in our homeschool.  It is such a simple addition, but it has made a huge difference for me in striking that balance between staying connected to my independent students and keeping the variety of grades I'm schooling from taking over my life and mind. ;)

Here's how it works, in process form:

First, we started a new paperwork system to mimic our new plan: my Big Kids turn all work into my tray.  It's just a paper tray by my "command center" that has been made the landing spot for everything: grammar worksheets, math notebooks, drawings from my kindergartener, paper crafts from my origami lover.  Each day, I have a scheduled time when I make corrections to skill-based work.  Some gets sent back to my kids for correcting, and then gets turned in again.  Then I pop those papers as well as any work we need to discuss together (like written narrations) into my Weekly Meeting folder, which holds my planning sheet, notes from pre-reading, handouts, and all the other bits I need to go over.

Here's a zoom-in on that, just focused on that middle section:

On the left of the list are the items I need to complete before Weekly Meeting.  I like to do the actual correcting beforehand to use our hour meeting time more efficiently.  Year 5 keeping gets done usually on the weekend, when I do my pre-reading.  So these items get spread throughout the week prior, but I do a quick check to make sure they're complete before we meet.

My kids also collect items to bring to Weekly Meeting.  They have a list in their binders to make sure they arrive prepared:

On Friday afternoons when all schoolwork is done, the Big Kids and I sit down and go through our Weekly Meeting list:

:: We share our keeping for the week.  That means not only do I look over their century charts, maps, reading logs, and commonplace books, but I also show them mine.  My hope is that there is a shared sense of educational eagerness in our home, and this is one way I work toward that.

:: Either they or I read through their written narrations, usually aloud because they like to hear each other's.  They do two weekly, one for science and one for history, and this term they have an additional written narration for their chosen biography.  During this time, I have a chance to comment on content and correct grammatical and spelling errors, as well as note particular issues they are having so that I can consider those during dictation selection.  (Note: at this point, we do not edit their narrations to completion.  These are just quick notes and fixes.)

:: We also look through all their other written work: math, Latin, Italian, copywork, and so on.  They go through any lingering mistakes from the week, sometimes with my help and sometimes on their own depending on what it is.  But by the end of Weekly Meeting, all written work should be ready to turn in or put away.

:: I choose a few Big Questions from my own notes to discuss, and they share any that they have.  They also can ask other questions -- for example, they are both keeping presidential charts on their own, so they will ask me the name of a president's spouse or his year of death if it isn't mentioned in their readings for the week.  They can also bring concerns to me: maybe they're having trouble making capital Qs in cursive, or they are almost done memorizing their poem and need help choosing another.  They also let me know when they need refills of copywork paper or pencil lead or new supplies for a handicrafts project.  These are the kinds of questions and concerns that it's helpful to condense into meeting time.

:: They turn in last week's checklists and I give them their new ones.  We also go over any adjustments to the schedule and look over plans for the coming week: lessons, exercise, menu, and such.

Then everything gets shelved or filed and we can head into the weekend.  And I can head into my pre-reading session for the next week with a clean slate on Saturday.

A few more thoughts on the advantages I've seen:

Most weeks it looks like the process I outlined above.  But on weeks we are busy, we have the option of making this a correction-and-question session, then filing everything and moving on.  So ideally it stretches out to about an hour with chat and sharing, but it can also be a 20-minute affair when needed.

During our meeting, the kids handle any lingering assignments so we can put away the books for the weekend.  That's a relief for me because I don't like my schoolwork spilling into Saturday, which can sometimes happen if a student is dawdling over math corrections or something. Instead, we do timed correction sessions through the week and then I help the student during this "study hall" time.  And then it's done.

Another real benefit to our Weekly Meeting is that it meets my need to compartmentalize and mono-task (is that a word?). I tell the kids to bring all their questions (about our readings, about our calendar and upcoming events, about various to-dos or concerns they have) to Weekly Meeting.  So instead of getting hit with all kinds of random complaints and queries day by day, I can deal with them all at once.  (Ideally.  Some kids are better at this than others.)  I literally have them write these on their checklist.  They feel heard; I feel sane.  It's a win-win.

Obviously, a Weekly Meeting is not essential for most families!  Like a Morning Basket or a Pre-Reading Session, it is one way to organize a chunk of your homeschooling tasks.  For us, with the particular students and schedule I have, it has been a great addition.

Do you do a weekly check-in with your older students?  This is new to me, but I know it isn't new to veteran mamas who have been doing similar daily or weekly check-ins for years.  I'm grateful for any ideas you'd like to share as I plan our format for next year!

My Weekly Planning + Pre-Reading Session

In this fall's scheduling post I mentioned our Weekly Meeting and my Weekly Planning Session. These are the two cornerstones toward my goal of keeping our homeschool humming along, the parts of my schedule that keep me on track, prepared, and checked in with my students.  I've given some sneak peeks over on Instagram but here will be a detailed look at how I organize things for my Year 5 kids and my Form I students.  What I share here isn't specific to any particular year, though -- it's just some principles for how to order your homeschool week that could be applied to any situation.

I'm going to start with my Weekly Planning Session, and I'll cover the Weekly Meeting in my next post.  Get ready for a bunch of nitty-gritty homeschool talk!

First, let's look again at that sheet I print out weekly for my planning:

I'm going to focus on the top section there: my list of tasks for the Weekly Planning Session.

You could easily keep these kinds of lists in Evernote or another digital form and access with your computer or tablet -- it certainly doesn't have to be printed.  I like manually checking off and writing my notes in pen, but I fully acknowledge it's not the most efficient tool.  It's just most efficient for me because I like it best, which means it actually gets done. (Know thyself and all that!)

The point is to have a list of things you need to do during your weekly planning session.  For me, that's pre-reading and some legwork for our more hands-on activities.  This list will vary depending on how many students you have, how independent they are, how you teach your other subjects, and how much you like to plan day-to-day.  I don't like to play day-to-day at all -- my life on the daily level is far more unpredictable, so if things don't get done during this session, chances are they won't get done at all that week.  So I make it a priority to be consistent.

When I have handle my weekly planning also doesn't matter, though I prefer some time during the weekend: usually late Saturday mornings, but sometimes Friday nights if we have plans all day Saturday. I sit down with this list, my agenda and school folder, a favorite beverage, and my laptop in the dining room next to our school bookshelves.  I spend about 1.5-2 hours (with lots of interruptions from small people, though my husband runs interference too!) checking off the items on this list.

This list dictates how I spend those hours.  Here's is a step-by-step of my process:

:: The bulk of  my time is spent reading through all the independent reading my Year 5 kids will do that week.  I started pre-reading consistently a couple years ago, and it has made all the difference in how I feel about my role as a teacher.  I go into each week feeling prepared and ready, and I am able to engage with my students much more effectively.  I also am getting so much personally out of the books -- I definitely count it as part of refreshing Mother Culture.

I know not everyone has the time to pre-read, but even if you can just manage it for a book or two, it's worth the effort!  Perhaps you could pick the hardest book, or the book you're least familiar with...or the book you most want to read! ;)  Also, if you're having trouble fitting it in, a week-by-week approach might not be best for you.  As students get older, their reading load increases, and it's not possible to read it all in a couple hours on a Saturday -- the mom of a teen student might want to pre-read a couple books daily, in a morning quiet time or before bed.  Perhaps summertime works best for you, and you keep your notes by book rather than by week.  Maybe you choose a couple books to read and a couple to listen to on audio and skip the note-taking, just aiming for listening and narrating to yourself as you go along.  You can homeschool without pre-reading, but I think you'll find that every little bit bears fruit.  Consider brainstorming how to make it happen in your home.  I guarantee you'll be glad you did!

I read with a place to take notes next to me -- I keep my notes on the back of my Weekly Planning sheet so that I have all my notes handy during our Weekly Meeting (more on that another time).

I have a note-taking code to myself: I star items I want to look up or add to my own keeping (commonplace, century chart, maps) -- things like dates, favorite quotes, names, facts I'd like to check on.  I put a Q next to discussion questions I might like to pose to my kids either after their narration or during our Weekly Meeting.  At the end of the year, my plan is to scan these notes and pop them onto Evernote in my Year 5 notebook for the next time around.  This also allows them to be searchable for future reference.

:: Afterward, I  take a few minutes to look up the AO study guides for the books we're reading and my own notes about supplemental activities.  That includes both books I'll be reading aloud and ones they're working on independently, as well as assignments for my Form I students.  For Year 5, I check a list of some experiments we're doing alongside Christian Liberty Nature Reader (I'd pull the required materials), the Madam How Lady Why study guide (I highlight in Evernote any discussion points I want to raise), any photos I want to view for the Book of Marvels, and so on.  I also put a post-it on the illustrations I want to use alongside The Burgess Book of Animals for my Form I kids and check whethere Long's Home Geography has us doing any hands-on work this week.

:: Next I take a quick look at my term charts to see if there's anything of note this week so I can amend the weekly checklist. Often there are weeks in which a particular book isn't scheduled, and I like to update my weekly checklist to reflect that. (For example, here I crossed out Our Island Story for my Year 2 student and added D'Aulaires' Abraham Lincoln, which we'll be reading over the next few weeks.)

:: I also add any changing bits to my weekly checklist: art study, music study, nature journaling challenge, nature study plans.  As I add those, I check if there's anything that needs to be prepared: is the art print ready to go?  Are the mp3s I need on my phone or do I have a CD handy?  Do I need to read a section from the Handbook of Nature Study for our Friday get-together?  Is my audio recording for Shakespeare loaded onto my computer?  Did I need to request a book from the library?  And so on.  This is a great time to look over whether the items I need for weekly hands-on subjects are prepared so I'm not left scrambling during the school week.

:: I take a few moments to prepare our Italian materials for the week too.  Over the summer, I sorted my Italian bin into some fabulous colored poly folders so that I can access our new and review activities more easily.  Each week, I work from a review folder and our current folder.  As items get mastered, they move from the current folder into one my my review folders.  I cycle through my review folders by changing to a new one each week.  My current folder requires some weekly organizing: I look over the materials I have in there and decide what activities to plan for the week ahead.  Sometimes I make a checklist of goals for the week and sometimes I just pull a few things from the folder, but at least everything is there at my fingertips.  I also choose the week's Italian dictation and written assignment for my Year 5 kids.

:: Then: remember all those starred items in my notes?  Now is the time to handle those!  I do my own Year 5 keeping, adding entries to my Century Chart, commonplace book (I have one dedicated to "school readings"), and maps.

:: Then: the Q notes?  I choose a few of the not-to-miss questions I've pondered and write those on the front of my planning sheet so they're all ready to go for our Weekly Meeting.  I also note in the same box any to-dos of particular importance that I want make sure to cover then as well.  The notes in that box along with the list above it determine how I spend our Weekly Meeting time.

:: Last is some personal prep work: I do some weekly-review-style brainstorming and troubleshoot any problem areas in attitudes, schedule, or assignments.  I look through my calendar for the week and create my menu plan.  I make sure my tablet is charged for school readings and go through the week's paperwork in my folder and tray.  (More on those "landing spots" during my Weekly Meeting post too.)

Then I put everything away and go about the rest of my weekend, ready to start fresh on Monday!

I referred to our Weekly Meeting several times, and that will be coming up next time.  So if you have questions about that process, save them until I get a chance to flesh that out a bit more.  But if there was anything unclear about what I have written here, feel free to let me know in the comments and I'll try to elaborate. :)

And others have been chatting about Weekly Planning lately too!  Dawn shared snapshots of her planning sheet, which includes both a comprehensive list of to-dos and a focused note-taking page.  And Jen Mackintosh has some gorgeous free printables to get you planning in style as well.  I so appreciate these ladies sharing tips and tricks and am happy to add my own process to the conversation too.

Happy Planning! :)

Form I in Our Home

I add In Our Home to my planning posts because what I'm doing with my students is always specific to our family's needs and skill levels.  The same goes for my Form I kids this year -- perhaps more so, since I'm combining them in various places for various reasons.  Still, I think it helps to see that there is room to combine without losing the integrity of the programmes or overscheduling/underscheduling your students.  It requires some familiarity with the AmblesideOnline books, a careful look at the workload of each year, a sense of which children will work well together and in what ways, and a willingness to consider your reality and flex accordingly. 

It also requires an openness to be honest with yourself about what will most benefit your students and balance that with your own needs as a homeschooling mom rather than leaning too heavily one way or the other.  I could easily just throw them into the same year, but I honestly don't think that would be best for those two students, so I choose to give up other things instead -- like outside commitments, my own free time, enrichment activities I could be doing with my older kids, more picture book reading with my littles -- and only combine in ways I find effective.  Similarly, I could have them in completely separate years and attempt to read aloud more hours daily, including those with toddlers and preschoolers underfoot. But I know that will make school stressful and not as pleasurable as it is now, and I'm not willing to sacrifice that.  There is always give and take in any decision we make for our homeschools, particularly in the early years, when students are so dependent on mama for guidance and face time throughout their school day.  We have to discern what is best for now and then move along on our chosen path with grace.

Okay, on to some specifics and a bunch of logistical chat. ;)

My friend Virginia Lee wrote a fabulous post about her Form I rotation over on Afterthoughts -- her plan is more long-term than mine and very well thought out.  I originally thought I too would like to put effort into creating our own formal rotation of AmblesideOnline books for the early years, but the fact that I have so many students so close together means my needs are a bit different.  I do plan on cycling through the Form I years roughly, but I'm inclined to plan that year by year rather than make a grand plan now.  There are just too many factors at play: for example, if my Year 2 student is reading fluently next year, I may spin her off to do her own thing and combine my Year 1 student with his younger sister.  I may not have another new baby in the home for a couple years, giving me the opportunity to spend a larger chunk of my day reading aloud and to combine less.  I may decide to put my 12-months-apart daughters in the same year completely and won't need to do any swapping.  And so on and so forth -- it's hard to predict what our future routine holds in a house full of little ones!

However, this year, I am using the same general categories Virginia Lee does, keeping separate for history and skill subjects and mostly combined for everything else.  And of course we're relying on AmblesideOnline as our general scheme because we love it. ;)

This year, I have a Year 2 student (seven-year-old Cate) and a Year 1 student (six-year-old Xavier).  They are 14 months apart and very different personalities. Both are reading, but neither is reading well enough to handle school books independently, so I decided to do more combining for the two of them this year than I might otherwise do.  Xavier sat in a bit on Cate's Year 1 readings last year, so for the Form I work, we're basically pulling from the Year 2 list.  That means Xavier is the one whose reading list is adjusted most from the usual AmblesideOnline selections.  Cate is getting a pretty standard Year 2 with just a couple small tweaks.

(As a side note: once Cate "ages out" of Form I, my next oldest, Bridget, will start Year 1 and join Xavier as Form I buddies.  When Xavier ages out the following year, Clara will join Bridget and I'll have a Year 1 and a Year 2 again, like I do this year.  Drew will start the year after that.  And so on. ;)  So I imagine I'll be doing some kind of Form I combining every year for the next decade or so.)

On to the schedule!  The notes below are posted with the permission of AmblesideOnline.  As you can see, I have used books almost entirely from their Year 1 and Year 2 booklists with the exception of our religion selections.  Visit their site for a complete lists with links for purchasing, weekly break-downs, study guides, and more.

	Cate in Year 2	Both	Xavier in Year 1
Literature	Understood Betsy (T1)	Grahame's Wind in the Willows (T2) Pyle's Robin Hood (T3) Pyle's The Wonder Clock Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare Poetry by De la Mare (T1), Field (T2), Rossetti (T3)  *MB Dangerous Journey  *MB	Aesop (T1)
History	Our Island Story Child's History of the World The Little Duke  (T1-2) Joan of Arc (T3)	Keeping of binder timeline D'Aulaires' Leif the Lucky (T1)	Our Island Story Fifty Famous Stories Abraham Lincoln (T2) Columbus (T3)
Geography		Holling's Tree in the Trail (T1-2) Holling's Seabird (T2-3) Long's Home Geography  *MB Keeping of maps from Tree in the Trail and Seabird
Nature and Science		The Burgess Animal Book Weekly nature outing and journal entry
Religion		Lang's Book of Saints and Heroes  *MB Schuster's Bible History  *MB The Gospel of Matthew  *MB The Catechism in Pictures (Sundays) First Communion Prep reading with Xavier
Math	RightStart Level C		RightStart Level B
Copywork		Using Startwrite copies of selected poems
Family Work		With the Big Kids: picture study, music study, memory work, Italian, handicrafts, physical education

Some of the method behind my madness, so you can see how specific these plans actually are to us:

:: Morning Basket.  Form I readings I'm actually reading to the whole family are labled *MB.  I am incorporating a few books that are narrated into Morning Basket this year though I never have in the past.  For example, the Big Kids have additional religion reading that they do independently, but Cate and Xave have all their religious instruction in Morning Basket right now.  (The way it works: my Form I students narrate the Old Testament and Dangerous Journey, and my Big Kids narrate the Gospel reading.)

:: Literature. I wanted to use Understood Betsy for Cate and I to read together, just us two, so he did some additional Aesop this term instead -- although he listened to quite a few Aesop stories last year and remembers them well, they're great for new narrators and I didn't want to skip them entirely. Then Cate and Xavier will be combined for Literature in Terms 2 and 3.  I'm still not quite sure how that will go: Wind in the Willows and Robin Hood are challenging books for a Year 1 student!  But those are both long weekly readings that will take several slots in our schedule, so I didn't want to devote that much read-aloud time if it wasn't going to be for at least two students. ;)  Luckily he is an eager and attentive listener generally speaking.

In lieu of Just-So Stories and Lang's Blue Fairy Book (which Xavier remembers well and I do too! ;)), I opted to read him The Wonder Clock, an AmblesideOnline alternative for Year 1.  Cate insisted on listening in as well since she hasn't heard it yet, so I scheduled it for them both.

Instead of the original Pilgrim's Progress, we're reading Dangerous Journey since we hadn't done that yet and I think it's suited to reading as a family, with the littles along (like in Morning Basket).  We just do a few pages weekly.

:: Year 1 Biographies. Xavier loves the D'Aulaires' books.  Since he read George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Buffalo Bill with us last year during Cate's Year 1, I scheduled a different set of three for him: Leif the Lucky, Abraham Lincoln, and Columbus.  Coincidentally, Leif the Lucky  and Columbus are Year 2 history alternatives for This Country of Ours, so Cate will join us for those.  I also may add in Pocahontas if I have time since he's skipping Viking Tales after reading it with us last year.

:: Reading Practice.  I have a slot in the evenings when I sit down on the sofa and whoever wants to can bring a book to read to me.  I allot about 5-10 minutes per kid (more for Cate).  Currently, Cate is reading me from Milly-Molly-Mandy and Xavier is working through some of the later Bob Books sets.  But they're free to bring to me what they'd like to read and we do reading lessons on whatever they have in hand.  I don't do any formal reading program.

ha!  (my kids do like bob books)

:: Math.  I start my kids veeery slowly in RightStart Level B during their kindergarten year, just a few lessons a month.  This year, Xavier is working through the rest of Level B and Cate started Level C a couple months ago.  I do combine them for the math games when it is convenient.

:: With the Big Kids.  Obviously, we do much of our schoolwork as a family.  That includes our Morning Basket (both the reading I do over breakfast and the bit we do before lunch -- picture study, music study, nature journaling lesson, etc). We study the same Shakspeare plays as a family, with the Form I kids listening to and narrating Lambs' and then sitting in for whatever they want to of the "real thing" on audio. They're also working on a scene they'll be performing together for our homeschool Shakespeare Festival.  I take these four on a weekly 3-mile run as well as a bit of daily exercise, so PE is a shared activity.  We do memory work together (which comprises our folk song, hymn, poetry, Bible passages, and prayers).  The kids have been working on paper crafts together this term, with different projects scaled to their various ability levels and the older kids giving hands-on help to the Form I kids.  They do chores together: Xavier is training under all three older siblings for various tasks, and Cate and Gianna work together on lunch every day.  We may be studying different periods in history, but so much of our life and learning is together that the days run very cohesively.

:: Outside Activities.  Cate is doing piano and art weekly with the Big Kids, but I'm waiting to add Xave to those activities until next year.  We all do a weekly nature study outing with our friends. All four will also do swim lessons again later this fall and probably in the spring as well.  I have them doing semi-private lessons all in the same time slot: Cate and Xavier are taught together by one teacher and Vincent and Gianna with another.

And here's what their daily schoolwork looks like:

:: Morning Block with Mommy - First thing in the morning (as in 6:45am -- LOL), I spend about 40 minutes between the two of them: about 15 minutes of math and 5 minutes of copywork with one, then the other.

:: Naptime School - I spend the first hour of naptime working with my Form I students.  That usually works out to one reading for my Year 1, one reading for my Year 2, and one reading for them together.  In between that, we do some kind of "keeping" activity: mapwork, timeline, or looking up photos of the animals we head about in Burgess to draw on cards.  When I am reading with their sibling, they do their math worksheet from the morning's lesson and/or piano.  Then they go off to play together.  I bring them back at the end of the second hour of Naptime School to join us for family work: one "riches" activity, Italian, and recitation/memory work.

And that's about it!  We have Morning Basket (over breakfast time), Nature Study Fridays, and cover handicrafts on the weekend.  But the rest of their schoolwork is done in those morning and naptime blocks four days a week.  I'll chat more about that when I share this year's schedule, but hopefully that gives you an idea of how light their school days are.

That's a very nuts-and-bolts post for you.  For those couple of you still reading (ha!), I hope there was something there you might be able to use.  I'd love to hear how you've combined your Form I kids -- I'm always looking for ideas!