I've posted about the Workbox Approach to scheduling here.  Since then I've had to revamp how we do our daily scheduling.  Not only are we now following the Charlotte Mason approach, but living in tight quarters has prevented us from using the folder system.

Once I made myself a planning page, scheduling our school day was easy (as you will see at the end of this post).   Here is how I did it.
First you can check out my post about having a plan for your child's education,  I take my planning from this document.

Second, you'll notice that the page is divided in half, the top half contains the subjects that we finish during our regular "school" time which ends at 1pm.

The bottom half contains the things we do throughout the day or in the evenings with my Husband.  Or subjects that only need to be completed once per week.  For example; after introducing a new composer, music study consists of me playing a selection of music from that composer while the girls play or read.

The next thing you'll notice is the color coding.  To me, this is the most valuable part of my schedule.  All of our subjects are listed on the left of the page, but only the boxes that are colored are completed during our "school" time on any given day.  This really makes planning quick and it prevents the kids from asking to do subjects that are not scheduled for that day.

To plan out the color coding I first put all the primary subjects for every day at the top and colored them all the same, most of the work is done at this point.  I also gave us a day off from our "regular" subjects (Day #5) so that we can dive deep into some other areas, like art or science, and not feel rushed.  It is tempting to make everything a daily subject, but resist the urge to overwhelm yourself and your children.

As for the rest of the subjects, I determined how many days a week are needed to complete a subject in a variety of ways.  Some subjects have a syllabus and tell you what is required in order to complete the course by the end of the school year.  For others I did some quick math, or I determined how often by the amount of time it took to complete a lesson.  For all subjects I tried to be sure that the top half of the page would be completed by 1pm.

Once you have the color coding complete you are ready to start scheduling, it usually only takes me 1 or 2 minutes to schedule each child's page.  You'll notice that often my scheduling is simply marking down the next lesson in the book we're working through.  This is really helpful for the the kids and I, and it gives me a record of the school year.

If you are following the public school calendar (either traditional or year-round), just cross out the days that are holidays etc, and keep moving if you'd like.  For example, our school system takes two weeks off for Christmas, my girls took about a week and then they were BORED and really needed to get back into the swing of school.  I had crossed off two pages in my planner to coincide with the public school schedule and just jumped to the next week. Since I follow the public school calendar for accountability in my homeschool, this was the easiest way to compare my schedule with the public school schedule and feel like I'm on track.  This is the reason for the Week # at the top of the page, I numbered the weeks on the school calendar to gauge where we are in relation to the school schedule. 

Quick Tips:
The kids enjoyed checking off their own work (and even get to use my special red "teacher" pencil) and choosing what they would like to do next.

I keep all this in one three ring binder and each of the girls have their own tabbed divider.  It was very helpful to use clips to attach the pages to the dividers. Attaching the pages to both the front divider and the next child's divider (a picture is worth a thousand words, see right.)This prevented them from having to flip through the pages, they just flip their tab and its ready for them to mark it off. 

I print in color/draft mode to save on ink, and print double sided.

I recommend that you only print about 2 extra schedule pages (4 weeks) at a time.  You'll be tweaking your schedule until you get into a rhythm. You can download a PDF copy of my scheduling page HERE or an editable .doc HERE. 

Please honor my copyright and if you would like to share this with someone, please refer them to my website.  Enjoy.

If you are wondering about the Life Skills subject visit this post for a list of life skills you may wish to teach your child.  Although it is not a "school subject" I put it on our schedule so I wouldn't forget to work on it a little each week.  Homeschooling is a beautiful thing.