We have run the gamut when it comes to structure in our homeschool. We’ve done Build Your Library, with their beautiful (to me) daily schedule of all subjects, right down to page numbers, to basically unschooling. What we have found works “best” and “for now”… because our relaxed homeschool is like a river, you never step in the same place twice, is light structure with calendars. 🙂
It’s kind of crazy how this happened. In one of my “research sessions” because, you know, I love to research everything, I came across RiverHouses.org. It’s a super cool site. He’s put together these calendars, around different topics. I looked at the calendars and a light went off in my head. I printed them out and laid them on the coffee table for Hanna to find.
We’ve recently changed things up a bit and Hanna is now responsible for choosing the material she will cover within a subject area. I’ve found there’s a lot less eye rolling when she’s coming up with the plan. I set the “subjects”, super general like, social studies, math, science, reading/language arts, and PE, she fills the slots with whatever she feels like learning that day. However, when we first started, she freaked out a bit, and was overwhelmed trying to find a way to fill her slots. Granted, this is what we’ve always done, it’s just always been me suggesting things to do, and her rolling her eyes at me for it. 😀
That’s where the calendars came in. She found the calendars on the coffee table and really connected with the River Houses States and Countries calendar. She jumped right in to fill her “social studies” slot. She found the day on the calendar, which country for the day and grabbed a beautiful Geography Of The World book off the shelf (thank you abandoned BYL 7 :P). She plopped down in front of the bookcase and began reading. She then jumped up and found the country on the map (which is mounted on a framed cork board and hung on the wall). She then wondered if there was an episode of Phil or Parts Unknown about the country, looked it up and found one, as well as some other youtube videos about the country. A full day of social studies for sure. She did the same the next day and the next, adding Flags Around the World to the mix as well, without me pestering or suggesting. It was fantastic.
It also got me thinking… hmmmm.
If she likes this calendar, what else might work like this?
I started searching the internet for more calendars I could lay on the coffee table. Turns out, I found quite a few.
The PBS tv schedule came in an email, so I printed it out.
This awesome Day in Science calendar, where every day has a scientist or some sort of sciencey thing and it’s easily printable.
I found history calendars. And of course This Day in History.
The River Houses weekly poems calendar. (Poetry Tea Time is finding its way back into our weeks! YAY!!!)
Magazines (such as Astronomy, or Smithsonian) that come once a month… the options for things on a schedule is kind of limitless! 🙂
Before I knew it I was on a calendar quest. 🙂 And I started putting together a calendar of my own (with the help of a friend) pulling together LGBTQ, and POC history and events.
Now we have all these calendars, and I bet it feels like things are getting crazy and we’ve got so much, too much, to do!!
That’s where it gets fun. We don’t have to do everything, all the time, from all the calendars. You get to pick and choose! You get to do, or not do.
It’s a light structure. It’s there if you need it, but not if you don’t.
What we did, since a new month was starting, we wrote on the calendar the states/countries… because she really likes that calendar. 🙂 We also went through the PBS calendar to check for shows we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss, like The Wild Ponies of Chincoteague, and a friend of ours is going to be featured on Positively Kansas for her work on saving one room schoolhouses in Kansas. 🙂 We also wrote down our weekly get togethers with our homeschool friends. We threw it all on the calendar. Now, for people who usually only have something on Tuesdays on the calendar, it seemed like a lot, but it really wasn’t.
This week we’ve been on.the.go. Literally, every day this week we were out of the house, some days we were in the car for more than 4 hours. YIKES. Hanna planned ahead, and packed her Geography of the World book, and noted the countries for the week. She threw in some Sudoku books, downloaded the Dragon Box apps, made sure we had an audible book available. We ran through our list of podcasts. Other than PE, she did more than most “home” days in the car this week. Some days she didn’t do the country of the day, instead she listened to a podcast like Serial, or watched a show like I am Jazz. It doesn’t really matter how she fills the social studies slot, as long as she’s digging into something in that realm each day. The calendars have really helped her feel “safe” that no matter what happens she knows she’s got something she can cover for that topic. I think it’s actually allowed her to experiment more and reach for different things, knowing if she doesn’t find something that excites her she can fall back on the country of the day.
You can cater this method to fit anything you and your kids want to focus on! Birds? Nature? Cars? Trees? Rivers? Coding? Search for a calendar related to your favorite topic, or create your own. Just a simple word or person for each day… see how it goes!!
Light structure seems to have created a ton of freedom and connection in our house. I’d love to hear how it shows up for you! If you’re using calendars to create light structure in your relaxed homeschool I’d love to chat about it! Join us in my Relaxed, Older Kids, Secular, Eclectic (ROSE) homeschooling group over on Facebook.
