Average Day Plans PLUS Chore Charts *Updated

Update Notes:  As is usually the case, I have already updated the plans, plus included mom's routines.

Last time I showed you our Morning Time binders and plans.  Now I'm going to show you how we organize our day, and that includes chores.  These are years worth of work and tweaking and planning and learning and tweaking and tearing up and reworking.  What works in this season is NOT going to work in the next season, and what works for me will NOT work for you.  Trust me.  I learned that the hard way.  Also note: most days will not look like this.  A few will, many will be close, and plenty will not even be recognizable to this.

So why build a schedule or a routine?  Because as Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."  And let's face it.  We juggle a lot of hats.  Our days are a battle.  We battle to stay afloat from the chaos that threatens to drag us down.  So we make a plan, we work to stick to it, and we have (a bit) of peace at least knowing what comes next.

This average day chart I built from most of what I've done in the past, but this year added in what I learned from Brandy Vencel's planning posts.  Some of it may remind you of Flylady.  Some is similar to what I've learned from taking Mystie Winkler's Sweep & Smile course.  Some is learning from A Mother's Rule of Life (if you haven't read it, stop reading this post and read that book!)  Some is gleaned from the various websites, books, courses I have taken.  And much is just me doing my best to lay out a good plan for the school year.

So this first one is our Average Day Chart for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. (click to enlarge).  We are each color coded and I tried to account for how long their school takes (assuming they are not dawdling) so they have plenty of time.  If they do dawdle that have all that wonderful free time in the afternoon in which they can make up any work. ;) I work individually with the youngest first and move up.  Teddy is really the fly in the ointment here.  I still haven't fully worked out his plan, but I think it involves trading off with big kids and engaging toys.  And a playpen and baby gate.  Let's be real.

 And this is our average day chart for some Thursdays (I say some, because twice a month we have AHG in the afternoons, which isn't accounted for here).  Note that I do not have one for Fridays or weekends.  First because our Fridays are much simpler, so I don't need the big picture plan as much. Second, I've tried to schedule my husband, but it just comes across as me being bossy and doesn't really account for the fact that he is an adult.  So I just don't do it.

 The biggest thing that the average day charts do not show are the routines that happen within those times.  And this is the real key to my (hopeful) sanity.  Because even if our day gets off to a late start, we can pick up with these routines and (again, hopefully) sail.  Each school-aged child has their own "Chore Chart". They have been put into page protectors and put up on the walls of their rooms.  This is a little different from what I've done before.  Previously I've used Flylady's weekly zones and assigned chores that way.  Life is just too complicated now for me to keep up with that level of detail, so I have assigned each zone to a day and we'll tackle part of it.  Other chores can be used towards earning extra cash.  Cash is only given for things done above and beyond the norm.  I'm not going to pay my kids to do what they should be doing anyway.  But if they want to earn a few extra bucks, there is a path for that. (pardon the glare.  Click to enlarge.)

Next up is Mom's Routines and loops, which of course is different from the kids'.

We will test the new system Monday and adjust if we need to, but we have a good start here.  When craziness threatens to take over, we'll just turn back to our plan!

2018-2019 Morning Time Plan PLUS Binders! (Bonus Tea Time Plans)

I've had a few requests to go through our Morning Time plans and our new Morning Time Binders.  The blog is probably the easiest way to do that with the added bonus that I can link to our resources (note that some links are amazon affiliate links).

 Here is my binder and the one that I will walk through here.  Each school age child (I'm teaching four this year!) has their own that is almost the same.  The only difference that I included their poems in their binder, not everyone else's.  My binder has everything for everyone.

The kids' binders are color coordinated, just like everything else around here!  They were also given the freedom to personalize their covers.

 The back covers have our opening prayers (click to enlarge).

The first page is our overall plan.  The numbers are minutes.  Why, yes I did sit down and do a pretend Monday Morning Time and time how long it took to go through each item.  I needed to make sure we could do it all in an hour.  Adding up the minutes equals 66, which is pretty close to an hour and includes lots of margin.

 After that are detailed weekly pages of the plan.  At the bottom of this page is the key to what my abbreviations mean.  

• Hymns - We are learning six hymns taken from Traditional Catholic Livings Year 1 Hymn study.

• Virtue - We use Simply Charlotte Masons Laying Down the Rails for Children plus whatever other resources I find to compliment the study here at home.

• Science - This year we are studying Chemistry using Noeo's Chemistry 2 plus all the resources they recommend.

• Poetry - We are following the poetry schedule laid out by Mother of Divine Grace plus each child will memorize one poem of their choice from the poet they are studying.
• Fritter (Grade 6) - Robert Frost
• Ladybug (Grade 4) - Emily Dickenson
• Sunflower (Grade 2) - Christina Rossetti
• Froggy (Grade K) - AA Milne

• Bible - We are going to work on memorizing six Psalms this year: Psalm 23 (a review), Psalm 34, Psalm 100 (a review), Psalm 139, Psalm 51, Psalm 136.  Some of this was taken from recommendations from Catholic Icing.

• Catechism - We have used the Mother of Divine Grace recommended schedule for memorizing parts of the Baltimore Catechism.  But I have found that keeping up with so many children each memorizing different parts to be impossible.  And now Fritter, as a sixth grader, is supposed to begin memorizing parts of Baltimore Catechism 2.  It's really unsustainable for us at this point to do that.  So instead, we are memorizing the first 14 chapters of BC 1, while still reading and discussing the parts that are recommended for their grade.  So Fritter will still get discussion of chapters from BC2, but will work on continuing to memorize BC1.  Each question and answer part of the chapter was typed out a put into the binders for ease of use.

• Shakespeare/Plutarch - We are continuing to use How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare.  This year we will study and memorize passages from Twelfth Night.  For Plutarch we are using Plutarch for Boys and Girls.  The plan is to study the life of Aristides.  (For more info on studying Plutarch see the section in Ambleside Online.)

• Other Memory - Here we have memory work for History, Geography, and Science.  Some of this comes from various years of recommended work in Mother of Divine Grace and some from Living Memory. (Note: We are not memorizing all of the info on these pages at the same time.  We are just doing the portions where the little Post-It Flag is until we've got it and then we'll move on.  This is all just possibilities.  I put all of these pages here simply so you can see what types of information we may get to.)

• History - We have used Connecting with History for several years and will be doing Volume 3 this year (High Medieval to Early Explorers) along with resources they recommend.

For Tea Time we are alternating Art and Music.

• Art - We are using two different sources here.  For the first interval (six weeks or so) we will be studying Giotto using the Artist Portfolios from Simply Charlotte Mason.  After that we will use Track B of Meet the Masters (we did Track A this year and loved it!)  We are also going to combine a bit of Art and Math in various projects I have devised for my students.
• Music - We will study Bach using the Composer Studies from Simply Charlotte Mason.  If we get through it we may use some of the suggested folk songs from Ambleside's Folk Song Rotation.

There you have it!  We will have one hour, three mornings a week, during breakfast and before Mass to go over the Morning Time material.  Tea Time will be after naps, also three times per week.  The hope is that this becomes the cornerstone of our homeschool day.  My goal is that if something has to be skipped due to....whatever, then we skip something other than this.  Morning Time, Mass, Tea Time.  This is what our homeschool day will turn on.  I need to be reminded of this when October and February hit!  Hopefully this cornerstone keeps burnout for us all at bay.  The focus here is on the good, the true, and the beautiful.  Soul food.

Tell me: are you doing a morning time or a tea time (or both!) with your students?  Do you have favorite resources?  Let us know in the comments!

Books Read in 2018

For Books Read in 2017 click here.

Continuing the theme of the books I have read, here are those completed in 2018.  Only those I actually finished are listed.  There are many more I started and continue reading off and on!  I will add to this list as the year goes by.  Note that these books lists are linked to over in the sidebar. -->

**These are amazon affiliate links.  I get a little kickback from any purchase made through those links.  That kickback helps fuel my reading habit!  :)

• January 
• Reading People by Anne Bogel
• The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place Book 1 (Family Read Aloud, Audible)
• February
• Strangers & Sojourners by Michael O'Brien (WRM)
• The Read Aloud Family by Sarah MacKenzie (review link here)
• March
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene (WRM)
• Captain's Courageous by Rudyard Kipling (Family Read Aloud, Audible)
• On Pilgrimage by Dorothy Day (WRM)
• The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place Book 2 (Family Read Aloud, Audible)
• May
• Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns (WRM)
• June
• Kindness by Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik (I have been reading this for about three years and finally finished! Also note, this link is to the out of print edition, here is the new edition link (abridged).)
• The Trumpet of the Swan by EB White
• July
• The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
• The Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris
• The Confessions of X by Suzanne M. Wolfe
• Macbeth by Shakespeare
• For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
• August
• Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
• September
• The Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson
• October
• Matthew (Bible)
• An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
• My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
• Jeeves in the Morning by PG Wodehouse
• November
• The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote
• The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge (reread)
• December
• A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
• One Christmas by Truman Capote
• PIlgrims Inn by Elizabeth Goudge (reread)

Books Finished in 2017 - Incomplete

I have kept a commonplace for quite some time now, but it was in my own disorganized way.  As I was reading I would jot down quotes that stood out to me, and list the title and author of the book.  My first commonplace was just a random collection of good thoughts from other people.  I did not even note the page, let alone have a spot to document the books finished.

When that commonplace was complete, half-way through last year, and it was time to start another one, I did things a little different.  I added a reading log to the back of the notebook, began using book darts to save the quotes I liked, and added the quotes when I was finished with the book.  So now all my quotes from the same book are together and they include the page number.

Now that I have a good list of books I have read, I thought I would share them here as well.  This list is incomplete because I only have info starting from September of 2017, as well as those read from the Well Read Mom (WRM) list.

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (WRM)
• The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis (WRM)
• Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis (WRM)
• The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkein (WRM)
• The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein  (Family Read Aloud)
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (WRM)
• O Pioneers by Willa Cather (WRM)
• Judith - Bible
• Esther - Bible
• Tobit - Bible
• Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (5th Grade Reading List)
• Homeschool Burnout by Raymond Moore
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Conner (WRM)
• Revelation by Flannery O'Conner (WRM)

*Note that these are only the books completed.   Several other books are not listed here because I did not finish them.

**These are amazon affiliate links.  I get a little kickback from any purchase made through those links.  That kickback helps fuel my reading habit!  :)