Monday, July 9, 2012

Schedule Solutions

If your child is anything like mine, then she likes to do things in her own time. When we first started homeschooling this drove me crazy! I wanted to have a set schedule with blocks of time for each subject. The problem? Princess was not wired that way. Somedays it would take her 10 minutes to do math, and then the next it would take 50 minutes. There was no way to judge how long anything would take her. This drove me crazy! And it drove my poor daughter crazy too. Once she told me that she loved everything about school except when I told her to hurry up. Oh, no! I didn't want her to have that sort of attitude about school stemming from me!

After two years (sometimes it takes us a while to get over our preconceived notions!), we figured out a way that worked for both of us! I liked to have the assignments all planned out and in order each day, and she didn't care about the clock. What I did is create this lovely "dry erase" schedule board. On each day I would write (in dry erase marker) her assigments for that day. As she accomplished each thing, she would wipe it off the list. It worked for us both! It is also a really cute feature in our school room:



It is very easy to make! I found this cute frame at our local Family Dollar store for very inexpensive. The kids and I looked through old magazines and used construction paper to create the backgrounds. (Note: the more solid and light colored the background, the better you can see your writing) Then you just write on the glass with a dry erase marker. We use a tissue to erase. It is so much fun!

Today, for Project #1 of Project Week, I added an addition to our wall planner:


I found also found this cute corkboard frame at our local Family Dollar store. I didn't have a really good place to display the kids work (really, really important to do!).  This frame is not terribly big (ie. it won't make your house look terrible!) and is perfectly decorated with pictures of my beautiful babies!

What ideas have you used to make your homeschool room cute instead of gaudy??

9 comments:

  1. I am new to homeschooling and I love your wipeboard idea. Very cute.

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    1. Thanks! I hope that you can find other things to encourage your first year here on my site. I haven't been blogging for very long, but this will be my fourth year homeschooling! Thanks for stopping by!

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  2. My 10 year old was the same way. We would battle on getting things done in a reasonable time. I started the dry erase board last year. He likes to see what is in store for the day and then erase them as he goes. Most of the time I would let him pick the order of the lessons. I love homeschooling and when we all 'get it'.

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  3. This year we are going to an A/B schedule doing 4 classes every other day...making the lessons longer. In this manner we can get all of our science labs and activities and hands on projects completed without me saying 'hurry up'. We still like to finish our things up by 1pm...I think it will work great. Also because I am starting with a K this year who is going to need more mom time than the 10 year old.

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  4. Yes! It works great, doesn't it? We do a semi-AB schedule. We have certain subjects we do everyday (math, language...) but for the "others" like science, art, history, I would rather choose one day and focus on it. It is easier to dive deep and do fun projects that way. I also have one starting K this year. I am a little hesitant about my first year doing 2 at once! I love homeschooling too! It is such a blessing to be able to do it! Thanks for stopping over!

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  5. Hi! We also have a dry erase board that works for us. My daughter likes to see what else she has to do and check off what she has done. Mine is not as pretty though!

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    1. Nikki, Mine was not to begin with either! However, I saw something similar to this on a friend of mine's fb page and the lightbulb went on! We love our board! However, with multiple children this year, we may be moving toward personal planners (*gasp!) with the dry erase for the overall daily schedule!

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  6. Love this. This would be a great idea for my artsy older girl. =)

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    1. Really, all of them would love it. Just put different backgrounds to suit the tastes of each one!

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