Lose the Clock, But Not the Timer

I'm a scheduler. There. I said it.

I've done MOTH (Managers of Their Homes). I've done 'em all. I DO learn something new each time. Sometimes I RE-learn those forgotten lessons... Like the one that says, "Do NOT put times on your schedule! YOU'LL BE SORRY!" But no. Gotta learn it the hard way, even if I learn it quick.

This time all it took was a trip to the bathroom. Yep. Son needed a rather l o n g break in the restroom, but THAT wasn't on the schedule! You gotta love cut and paste on Excel; particularly CUT. DELETE. It's outta there! The times column is gone. Replaced by a nice limit as to how long to spend on each item. That would be SHORT limits, as in "Short Lessons" which Charlotte Mason advocates and may very well be the thing that sets us free from "I HATE SCHOOL" .

This was my first step: re-create the schedule. After total chaos in the day, order seems appropriate. Especially order that brings joy and productivity. When you focus on "short lessons"--anywhere from 10-40 minutes, depending on age--it's amazing the things that you can fit in a day! We can do art again. And spend time drawing. And time outside. It's amazing what you can do when you get math done before dark! Oh. And there's music and ALL the wonderful things I'd dropped because I was "doing too much" and making the day too long. Now they are all on the schedule throughout the week and we always get done with our main subjects by 12:00 or 12:30.

Now I don't do them the same, and some I've had to discard the previous curriculum, but the point was to learn them, not choke on them! We've brought back some wonderful old favorites such as reading and studying the hymn writers using the Mr. Pipes series. No one ever says they "hate" that!

Ordering the day is the perfect ideal. It is one of the things that first attracted me to MOTH: the idea that you can make a list of everything that you'd WANT to do in a day, then schedule it. The fact that you may not be able to get those three hours of math in can be tough! But 30 minutes can work too! Heehee! :)

The truth is, we are doing a 15 minute lesson, with 15 minutes starting on problems. Then later, he has another 15 minutes to finish. He really likes this much better and seems to remove a lot of pressure. If he still can't get it done, it doesn't feel as if he hasn't done a thing, wasted a lot of time, and it's the end of the world, if you know what I mean.

I can't tell you the burden that has been lifted.

We still must continually work on breaking our old habits and establishing our new ones, but we'll get there.

So far, so good!