I discovered the secret to designing a schedule.

[sharonb]

Ever since I decided to bump my oldest two children to Preparing, I was wondering how I will schedule our days (we are also doing Beyond and Little Hands). It seemed too overwhelming to write or type it out and to hope I'm not forgetting anything. Last night I had a lightbulb moment:

POST-IT NOTES! (Yes, I know that this is not a new idea, but it's something I have never tried before.)

I wrote each and every box from our guides onto post-it notes, with "T", "S", or "I" so I'd be able to see my involvement at a glance (I also wrote the approximate amount of time the box should take). I also wrote activities for the preschoolers on post-its. Then I started arranging them to come up with a schedule. I started off doing this on the cover of a notebook, but quickly ran out of room, so I switched to the wall. Because everything was on individual post-its, I was able to shift things around until I got a schedule that should work. Once I was satisfied with the schedule, I wrote it down on paper; that way I won't lose everything if the dc decide to play with my post-it notes! Today I'm going to type up the schedule, and we'll give it a try this coming week! I'm going to take the post-its off of the wall and put them away somewhere so I can use them again if I find that the schedule needs tweaking later on.

I hope this idea helps someone! I'm a very visual person, so it REALLY helped me to plan a schedule this way.

BTW, I have our start time at 9:00 a.m. and we should be finished by 2:00 p.m. at the latest (this includes 30 minutes for lunch and adding botany and a couple of quick odds-and-ends for the oldest two, like piano theory); I'm happy with that!

[pjdobro]

That's a great idea! It sounds like you have a great schedule planned out. Let us know how it goes!

[my3sons]

This is an awesome idea! I LOVE it! Could you please post this in the "Let's Share Our Schedules" thread too if you get the chance? I think this is an outstanding organizational tip that is so visual that it will be a huge help to moms as they try to put together their day. What a creative idea! Thanks for sharing this, sharonb!

In Christ,
Julie

[sharonb]

Julie-
I did a copy-and-paste of my post into the schedule thread.

[my3sons]

Thanks!
In Christ,
Julie

[Mom2Monkeys]

Love it!

[NicoleJ]

That IS a brilliant idea! I am going to look at your schedule because I am doing Preparing, Beyond and LHTH as well!

[sharonb]

That IS a brilliant idea! I am going to look at your schedule because I am doing Preparing, Beyond and LHTH as well!

I didn't actually post the schedule yet; I'm waiting to see how it goes this coming week. Hopefully all will go well and I can come post the details!

ETA:
About once or twice a year, I make really detailed schedules for school. And every time, I stick with them for a day or two. I am just NOT a schedule person!!! My dc and I are definitely checklist people. I do their history/Bible study/etc boxes in the living room, but for the other subjects, they are all in the kitchen working on various things at the same time. I'm helping as needed. I know some see that as chaotic, but that's how I prefer to do it. With the "checklist method" we still finished school in a timely fashion, and I didn't feel like we were wasting any time waiting for each other. It felt more efficient. So, I'm not actually going to follow the schedule that my post-it notes helped create. But, hopefully the idea was helpful to someone anyway.