Student Scheduling and Tracking
Over the years, I have visited with moms who are drawn to unschooling, but can't quite get away from "making sure" everything is covered. Please be assured that even when you "cover" everything, the student is not learning everything. See Lecture, Test, Forget.
I'd like to share with you a schedule I made. This is close to what I have used for my own children for many years.
As you can see, this is a very simple schedule. It's meant to me. We don't want to overschedule the children. There needs to be lots of time for them to explore and learn on their own.
Weekly Topics
If you are doing any of our Celebration Education classes, you are involved in a theme. Each week is a different topic, based on the theme. We aim to introduce the topic to students through fun, hands-on activities. Our hope is that students will take an interest in the topic and want to know more about it. We provide to the students a list of project-style activities that they can do to follow up on the topic. The weekly list is posted on our blog.
Personal Interest
We encourage students to spend time improving their strengths. These tend to be things that they take extra interest in. It might be improving a talent, taking special interest classes, or making something of their own design.
Adventure
Adventure comes in many forms. It can be field trips, experiments and exploration. This provides more opportunities for children to learn through their curiosities.
Check Boxes
Because reading, writing, and math are the school subjects that are most valuable to us, I provided a space to track each day that these skills are used. Reading and writing tend to be a part of learning and exploring topics, but math is harder to integrate into the subject. You may want to use a curriculum for math activities, but remember that you do not need to make sure that every math problem is completed. Allow your child to move on when she is ready. You may want to be on the lookout for resources for fun and/or free math resources.
Scheduling and Record-Keeping
I encourage you to use a schedule like this, but not just for planning. You can also use this to help you keep track of what you've done. Sometimes you forget about all the great learning experiences you've had unless you have a way to look back at the things you've done. Keep track of these things can help reassure to you're not only doing a lot of school work, but you're learning some awesome stuff! Don't forget to include the serendipitous learning experiences you have!
Feel free to download, adapt, and use the schedule as you like!
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