When I began following a Charlotte Mason style of education, I used Ambleside Online pretty exclusively. I’m so grateful for the work of the AO contributors. It is an amazing wealth of resources that people all over the world use. It worked out great while I was only homeschooling my son, who seamlessly transitioned from a different program into level 3 when he was in the third grade. But with the addition of my siblings and niece, and then later my 2 little girls, the division of my labor became too much for me.
The kids might have had 4 hours of work in a day, but by the time I had spread myself across all of them, I had a much, much longer day. Also, the kids’ day did not have a Charlotte Mason feel to it. I was checking boxes and wiping my brow, leaning towards the finish line of every day. I did try utilizing the older kids to help with the younger ones, but what I really began to value were the subjects we could do all together. I still used AO for several years but in a different capacity. Instead of starting with the books, I started with the schedule.
Of course, now I’m a co-host of A Delectable Education Podcast where we do individual consultations to help families combine where it is appropriate for their family. We still recommend people start by preparing their schedule, but now we have schedule cards to make the process much easier.
The series below walks you through why we need a schedule and how to preparing one from scratch. My hope is that whether you use the schedule cards or you use this series to create your own, you will find a way to make your school schedule work for you while maintaining the atmosphere Charlotte Mason advocated as the first of the instruments we have available to us.
“Let us look in at a home schoolroom managed on sound principles. In the first place, there is a time-table, written out fairly, so that the child knows what he has to do and how long each lesson is to last. This idea of definite work to be finished in a given time is valuable to the child, not only as training him in habits of order, but in diligence; he learns that one time is not ‘as good as another’; that there is no right time left for what is not done in its own time; and this knowledge alone does a great deal to secure the child’s attention to his work.” –Charlotte Mason, Home Education, p. 242
Introduction:
How Does Your School Day Get Off Track
The PNEU Schedule:
A Charlotte Mason Morning Schedule
A Charlotte Mason Afternoon Schedule
Is Following a CM Schedule Impossible?
A Schedule vs. Page Counts
How Does a Schedule Help?
Now that we know the importance of a schedule and the need for flexibility in making one of our own, let’s consider how we go about preparing one that works for our family.
Scheduling Cards
Watch a video about how to use the new Schedule Cards created by A Delectable Education. We have used the Matrix below to create a 5-day schedule, that can be manipulated by hand. Please note that these cards were updated in July 2020 to reflect our new understanding of the schedule since they were first published four years before.
Creating Your Own Schedule:
My Matrix – What can you do together or at least at the same time?
Initial Questions and Considerations
Merging Forms to Create Your Own Schedule
Some Final Thoughts
Recalibrate Your Morning Routine
Forms and Links:
Scheduling Workshop Resources
How Did it Go?
I’ve heard such wonderful feedback from people once they have used their customized schedule for a while, but maybe you aren’t quite there yet. This really was an awful lot to take in, and it might be that you could use a second set of eyes to look it over. If so, check out Liz, Emily, and my consulting services over at A Delectable Education.