Term 4 Weekly Schedule Sample

I was recently involved in a discussion online about how to schedule out our children's schoolwork.  I offered to share a sample of what I started doing in our fourth term for my 3rd grade daughter.  I wanted to help her to work more independently and I wanted to force myself to be a little more on top of my weekly plans.

To give credit where credit is due, I was strongly inspired by Jen's post at Wildflowers and Marbles (go to the bottom of her post, where she links to the 5th and 9th grade plans in the second to last bullet point).

To fill this out each week, I edit the previous week's plan to increment the readings and other assignments, and I look at the plan I developed over the previous summer using the Simply Charlotte Mason Planner to make sure I'm on track with what comes next.  I also consult our calendar to make sure there aren't any special appointments or anything that I need to plan around.  I found that it all fell together very nicely and was very easy to put together.  I also have another overall schedule (MOTH type) that helps me know what I and the other two children are supposed to be doing at the various intervals.  It isn't all written in stone, but having expectations for how long things should take helps keep things moving along and makes sure things get done in a reasonably timely manner.  If something doesn't get completed, then the work has to be done during the quiet time in the afternoon.  The rest of our day and evening is fairly unscheduled - I can only maintain that sort of scheduled pace for so long! - but having a portion of our day so heavily scheduled out has been incredibly worthwhile.

And a couple further notes on the file - in math, IP stands for Singapore's Intensive Practice and CWP stands for Singapore's Challenging Word Problems.  We finished Math-U-See Gamma in mid-spring, and rather than start Delta at that awkward point, I decided to switch to these workbooks.  Also, I think I was assigning too much reading in a block for my 3rd grader.  Even though she's a strong reader, it was a little much to read, assimilate, and narrate.  But I was trying to finish up a few things so I decided to do it anyway.

And finally, without further ado, here it is below.  Please click on the link below to download the file, or use the Scribd controls at the bottom of the Scribd window to look at it more closely in the browser.

2011-06-06