I discovered the secret to designing a schedule.
Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 7:34 am
Ever since I decided to bump my oldest two children to Preparing, I was wondering how I will schedule our days (we are also doing Beyond and Little Hands). It seemed too overwhelming to write or type it out and to hope I'm not forgetting anything. Last night I had a lightbulb moment:
POST-IT NOTES! (Yes, I know that this is not a new idea, but it's something I have never tried before.)
I wrote each and every box from our guides onto post-it notes, with "T", "S", or "I" so I'd be able to see my involvement at a glance (I also wrote the approximate amount of time the box should take). I also wrote activities for the preschoolers on post-its. Then I started arranging them to come up with a schedule. I started off doing this on the cover of a notebook, but quickly ran out of room, so I switched to the wall. Because everything was on individual post-its, I was able to shift things around until I got a schedule that should work. Once I was satisfied with the schedule, I wrote it down on paper; that way I won't lose everything if the dc decide to play with my post-it notes! Today I'm going to type up the schedule, and we'll give it a try this coming week! I'm going to take the post-its off of the wall and put them away somewhere so I can use them again if I find that the schedule needs tweaking later on.
I hope this idea helps someone! I'm a very visual person, so it REALLY helped me to plan a schedule this way.
BTW, I have our start time at 9:00 a.m. and we should be finished by 2:00 p.m. at the latest (this includes 30 minutes for lunch and adding botany and a couple of quick odds-and-ends for the oldest two, like piano theory); I'm happy with that!
POST-IT NOTES! (Yes, I know that this is not a new idea, but it's something I have never tried before.)
I wrote each and every box from our guides onto post-it notes, with "T", "S", or "I" so I'd be able to see my involvement at a glance (I also wrote the approximate amount of time the box should take). I also wrote activities for the preschoolers on post-its. Then I started arranging them to come up with a schedule. I started off doing this on the cover of a notebook, but quickly ran out of room, so I switched to the wall. Because everything was on individual post-its, I was able to shift things around until I got a schedule that should work. Once I was satisfied with the schedule, I wrote it down on paper; that way I won't lose everything if the dc decide to play with my post-it notes! Today I'm going to type up the schedule, and we'll give it a try this coming week! I'm going to take the post-its off of the wall and put them away somewhere so I can use them again if I find that the schedule needs tweaking later on.
I hope this idea helps someone! I'm a very visual person, so it REALLY helped me to plan a schedule this way.
BTW, I have our start time at 9:00 a.m. and we should be finished by 2:00 p.m. at the latest (this includes 30 minutes for lunch and adding botany and a couple of quick odds-and-ends for the oldest two, like piano theory); I'm happy with that!