Helpful Homeschool Hints: Daily Schedule

I have a teacher plan book in which I write our daily lessons.  I highlight each lesson as we complete it.  I can see at a glance what we have to do and what we have done.  A few years back when ds2 started 7th grade he wanted access to his assignments so I downloaded Homeschool Tracker Basic, inputted our lessons, and printed him a weekly sheet.

This year I wanted to do something similar for my little boys, but the youngest can’t read yet and I don’t particularly enjoy having to input lessons into a program after having already written them in my own book (and no, I’m not giving that up lol.)  I came up with a daily schedule of sorts that the little boys can use to see exactly what we have planned for the day.

This is a little “word wall” thing I picked up at Target’s dollar section.  It came with white cardboard strips in each pocket.  I cut those strips up so I could fit three across a row.  The top row has each boy’s name on a strip, ds3 on the left side, ds4 on the right side.  I wrote out each boy’s subjects on a card, ds3 in red, ds4 in green.  (Sometimes it’s a subject, like “history” but sometimes it’s a certain program within a subject, like “Mathletics or “Code Book.”)  Every morning I put the appropriate card under each boy’s name on the chart.  When they complete a subject they can turn the card over.  (Some subjects they study together.  I write those in blue and put them in the middle of the chart.)  Now they can easily see what they have to do each day, and take quite a bit of joy in turning a card over.  Since my boys are still young (4th grade and 1st grade) they really only need to know what subjects we’ll be doing lessons in, not all the details of each lesson.

I especially like this simple system because it is hardly any work for me.   I just consult my lesson planner and put cards on the chart each morning.  Now when I get the inevitable “Are we done yet?” question I can just say, “Check the chart.”  :)

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