Thanks Cathy!!!

On Monday I was blessed to be able to spend a couple of hours talking with a good friend of mine. She is one of those people that you spend hours with but when you leave it feels like it has only been five minutes. She homeschools and always has great ideas. In fact I picked up a great idea from her and I am so excited to get started. I have family and friends that would just love the idea so I am going to explain and post pictures below.

OK. Here is the chart that you need to get started… (I picked it up at the local school shop).
Each child gets 5 cards with their name on them (that number can be whatever you want it to be). They have to choose five different areas to complete sometime throughout the day. However I can stick a little card with their name on it in two activities that I decide they must do that day. So I might decide that Joshua has to do Math and Reading. He will have to do those to categories but he gets to choose three other activities that interest him that day. Pretty cool!!!

These are my descriptions for each category (they can be altered to whatever works for your family).
Art- draw a picture, coloring, building something out of craft materials
Computer- Starfall, educational computer game
Math- extra page in math book, for Asher working on counting and calendar work
Free choice- household chore (they get to choose from a list)
Writing- a story, poem, song, for Asher the alphabet or small words
Spelling- write spelling words two times each, for Asher talk through spelling some small words
Listen- classical music or whatever CD I choose (the CD I have chosen is in the pocket behind the word Listen).
Phonics- Explode the Code, for Asher sounding out small words (see the red chart at end of this post)
Reading- the library reading program (during the school year it will be whatever books we are currently working on)
There are two blanks that you can fill in and make whatever categories fit your needs. I added Awana and Legos.

This is so cool!!! It puts the kids in charge of getting things accomplished. During the school year this will be great when one child has downtime while I work with the other. For example, if I am working with Asher I can send Joshua to the chart to make a choice and follow through with his activity. WooHoo!!! You can make the completion of each day worth a point and then have them working toward a prize.

I also picked up another chart to use during the school year. You can tell I was a school teacher before having kids, I just love teaching supplies!