The Schedule: Update #1

We survived the first day! I would actually be so bold as to venture out and say we THRIVED the first day! It really did work.

Now, I will admit that if I were being judged on punctuality we would have been fired. As the day went by, I didnt hold any one's rears to a fire and beat a stick that said: the schedule says we are 5 minutes late! If we werent doing what the schedule said, I assessed the situation and quickly tweeked it for today. I found that my ideas when I wrote the schedule werent always realistic or the most beneficial for my family.

There were also a few wrenches thrown in the mix: The 'Chuck' season finale was TWO HOURS long and I had 'budgeted' for 1 hour. We, however, LOVE Chuck and were please with an extra hour to feed our Chuck love before the summer break. And, my DSL, went down right before my scheduled time to blog last night, which meant I had to spend a little extra time blogging this morning instead. Oh well, we survived, and I ended up with a bit of extra sleep. Hmm, maybe God knew I needed that!

As I type this, we are on day #2. It is also going well, though there have been a few 'misses' in the schedule again. We are all feeling just a tad bit under the weather, it seams, and we arent running at our best.

What the schedule has really helped is to let me know what is next. In other words, when we are done with what we are doing {which has usually been what the schedule said}, I know, and the kids are learning, what comes next. I also know how much time I have budgeted for an activity. So, if I wanted to spend 1 hour on school, I try to stick to that time allowance even if we didnt start right on time.

Another thing I have noticed is that if we aren't 'on task' we are usually doing something that is supposed to come up later on the schedule. For instance, if the kids are deep in meaningful play without arguing, I am hard pressed to break that up. So, I will just take time from a later playtime and use that for the cleaning, school time, etc that we are supposed to be doing. Make sense?

Thank you all SO VERY MUCH for all your kind words on my original schedule post! You have no idea how encouraging they were! I also want to throw out there that I have tried other systems and methods before and still use some of their ideas {for example Flylady} in my day. But, I really felt it was time for me to figure out what works best for my family rather then trying to make my family fit a system. I will keep updating you from time to time on how its working out. God Bless!