So, what have we been doing up to this point?  To start with, I bought the lovely scheduling cards from A Delectable Education.  As much as I love researching, the many, many hours it would take me to pore over PNEU schedules and come up with my own time frames just doesn’t make sense when the work has already been done… and only costs $5.  Yes, you read that right.  Five dollars.  Buy them now, thank me later.  So I laid out the scheduling cards, and planned out our days.  I decided that having a plan for each day of the week was too rigid, so I assigned numbers to the days and put them on rotation – every school day we just picked up the next day in rotation.  Honestly, this worked well in some ways for the season of life I was in.  But it had one big catch… there wasn’t really a consequence for missing a day of school.  We didn’t miss our favorite nature lore book, or literature book, or history book… we just did them the next day.   So, what was the next step?  I finally gave in and admitted that we should actually assign work to certain days of the week – and if we missed that day, we missed it.  (Of course, this is the advice of the scheduling cards, which I clearly should have listened to from the beginning.)  The only exception being that if we have planned days off I will occasionally move around the schedule (we’re so much more likely to take off on Monday or Friday for a long weekend, so I will sometimes move days around to even this out).  Overall, this has been working well.  I think if we were typically organized, scheduled people, this would be enough.  Starting at 8:30, 9:30 or even 10:00 doesn’t matter if you are consistent…. IF you are consistent.

I am not consistent.  (Remember when I said this is a blog where you learn from my mistakes and laugh at them with me? haha)

I am not a morning person and have bad habits around sleep (namely staying up too late to soak up precious alone time, a problem I am certain no other mamas have…), and having no commitments most days has led to school sometimes starting at 9am, and sometimes not until 1pm.  This might work for some families, especially if it’s a planned choice, but in our case there is no planning and it’s just not working.  I thought it was working last year.  Flexibility is why we homeschool, after all, right?   But, no.  As we try to develop other habits (education is a life, right?) I’m realizing just how much it really is not working.

So, this is where I buckle down and put times on a schedule.  Starting now we miss singing lessons if we start late (they’re everyone’s favorite, that’s not an accidental choice, I know Miss Mason started with Bible, but it seems to me right now that this season calls for starting with the most exciting subject).

I will readily admit I am scared.   But a part of me is also very excited.  We are going to use our time more wisely.  And, THAT is where true freedom lies – when we have planned hours of leisure that aren’t fraught with concerns about other tasks – because those tasks have a time as well.

Wish me luck, I’ll be back here to let you learn from more of my mistakes soon, I’m sure…

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