Who Am I Kidding?

So, yesterday I blogged about how I was debating on whether or not to have a home school schedule. Anyone who has known me for more than a day knows that I thrive on organization and order. The teenagers in our youth group all know that Nick is "the fun one" and I'm "the fun-sucker." I admit it. I tend to suck the fun out of any given event at the point where things start to get crazy. We're a perfect team though because Nick is very outgoing and an extremely gifted speaker, and I am definitely more comfortable behind-the-scenes. I am very organized by nature so it suits me just fine to plan all the fun while Nick carries it out. So, who am I kidding? To teach without some sort of a plan is totally against my nature. I need a schedule and my kids need a schedule. What we don't need is for me to stress out if  when we run behind schedule, so I made it simple.

I'm up at the crack of dawn whether I like it or not thanks to a certain little boy so I decided to get up a tad earlier (6 instead of 6:30) to get a jump start on the day. I'll get the kids up at 6:30 when Nick gets up for work and we'll all eat breakfast together. After breakfast we'll do our "morning chores," as I like to call them, which is to get dressed, brush our teeth, and make our beds. We do that every morning so that won't be a stretch for us. I plan on starting school by 8 a.m with our morning devotion in the living room. We did this last year, but at 9 instead of 8. This year, I think I'm going to add a few exercises/stretches to get our blood pumping first thing in the morning. That should be fun. Then I'll do school with Toby while Lorelai plays with Seth and they'll switch and eat a snack when Toby's done. His lessons won't take more than an hour to an hour and a half tops. I'll teach Lorelai while Toby and Seth play in their room. We'll break at 11 so I can make lunch and clean up a bit and they can watch a little TV. Lunch will be at 11:30, followed by story time, then naps for the boys. While they're sleeping I'm going to do my P90X and shower while Lorelai works on her assignments or reads from the book basket. When I'm done, we'll have a little snack and  I'll have a good hour or two to work with her before the boys wake up. Toby usually sleeps around 2 hours and Seth takes one three hour nap now. (I miss the two nap days already!) Then around 4:30 I'll cook supper while they have free time. Dinner and devotion will be around 5:30. Hopefully Nick will be home by then, but I doubt it. Then we'll do chores, have family time (go for a walk, play a game, watch a movie, etc...) around 7, clean-up the house and get ready for bed at 8, and the kids will be in bed by 9. That's when I'll finally get to sit and plan lessons, catch up on what I have recorded on the DVR, read a book, or just go to SLEEP!

I think I can live with this schedule. It has some wiggle room and follows the natural flow of our day. We're also going to do school five days a week this year instead of four so we can catch up if we need to. There's a possibility that our co-op may not continue this year, but if it does we'll go to that every other Friday and school on the alternate Fridays. Our first day of school will be August 6 and we'll take our first week break during the week of Toby's birthday because birthdays are school holidays around here! We have seven 5-7 week sessions planned this year with taking the whole month of December off for our winter break. I am ready to get back in the swing of things. As much as I like summer break I almost crave the structure that comes with starting back to school.

As far as lesson plans go, I have the majority of Toby's first 5 weeks planned already. A lot of Lorelai's are already planned for me, but I have one more week after this before I'd like to get the rest planned. Our summer bucket list is only about half completed, but we'll continue to work on it and hopefully get most of the things marked off before too long. If I didn't make lists I'd be so lost! Plus, I love the feeling of accomplishment when I get to scratch things off one by one. Me without a schedule? Yeah right!   

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