When I was going to college block scheduling was the “fad” way to schedule your teaching day. After 7 years of homeschooling, I really quite forgot about it until this year. I was reflecting on the pros and cons of our homeschool adventures from last year, and KNEW I needed to do something to help keep my young man “on task.” As a typical boy, he is very prone to daydreaming and distraction. (If you’ve ever seen the kid’s movie “UP!” – think “Squirrel!”)
I really racked my brain for a solution. Then one day after researching various methods of homeschooling online I came across some articles related to homeschool immersion studies. The idea is that the child studies one subject as deep and as broad as they like until they tire of it. Some unschoolers use this method. I wasn’t so sure that would work for my little dudes, but something about it stuck in my head. So, I thought on it awhile and tweaked it to fit my needs. I finally decided doing one major subject each day would give us less “starts” and “stops.” So here is what I came up with:
Monday
- Read for 30 minutes from a chapter book of your choice. I want to see WAY more reading this year!
- Bible
- Math for 2 hrs. do as much as you want to, but at least my suggested minimum. Open ended leaves them with the ability to go past grade level if they are motivated to.
- Time4Learning – I set a certain number of lessons for them to complete in a day.
- Spelling City
Tuesday
- Read for 45 minutes in their chosen chapter book.
- Bible
- Latin
- Language – do as many pages as you want, but at least ?. Work for 2 hours.
- Time4Learning
Wednesday
- Read for 30 minutes
- Bible
- History – read for 30 minutes. Do a project based history lesson with all four smaller children. About 2 hrs.
- Spelling City
- Time4Learning
Thursday
- Read for 45 minutes
- Bible
- Latin
- Art
- Science – work together to cover 1/2 a chapter and lapbook it. All four younger children together.
- Time4Learning
- Spelling City
Friday
- Read for 30 minutes
- Bible
- Math – work for 2 hours. Complete as much as you like, but at least my min.
- Spelling City Test
- Time4Learning
We have started with this new schedule this week. So far it is going well. The only difficulty has been my little gentleman is SSOO not used to focusing with distraction. Monday was difficult, but today was better.
I love this idea! Some of the curriculum we use takes way more than 30 min to complete., and doing it this way she may be able to slow down and do her best instead of rush to ” beat the clock.” Thanks for posting!
I like this idea of scheduling out the days. I have been trying to figure out how to do it all when I have some that move faster then others. I think putting different subjects on different days would be great for us. Thank you SO much for writing out your schedule. Such a great idea!
I have 2 profoundly gifted children (not always as much fun as people think, as they are STILL children, gosh darn it). We’ve been block scheduling for six months now, and it has been GREAT.
Far from a fad, the better high schools in our metropolitan area block schedule. They achieve better results not only with the T&G crowd, but with those who learn differently and so-called ‘regular” kids. Several colleges, most notably Cornell in Iowa, have been block scheduling for years.