Inspired by the Waldorf notion of daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms, this chart shows the typical pattern of our days. The kids and I begin most days with reading books, playtime and baking. Then we get ready for our morning activities, including getting dressed and packing snacks. Each morning consists of some activity, usually loosely-structured and involving family members, friends, and the outdoors as much as possible.
Midday brings lunch and then nap time for my toddler and quiet time for my older daughter -- and mom! Then we usually read or play.
After quiet time and nap, we have a snack and prepare for an afternoon activity, followed by unstructured outside time for as long as possible, often including dinner outside. Finally, it's bath, books and bed.
Now, not every day moves this smoothly and we sometimes have hiccups or interruptions to these rhythms, but I find the most successful days for all of us follow the natural ebb-and-flow of calm periods, followed by active periods, followed again by calm, and so on. This allows for ample rest and reflection for all of us among the busy pace of our days.
These homeschool rhythms provide a sense of flow to our days and weeks, but we also do not feel fettered by them. For instance, if it's a rainy day on homeschool park day, we may go to a museum or the library or just stay home and do crafts. If we've been especially busy and I can sense we all need a break, we may skip a planned activity and recharge. Often if we seem a bit out-of-sorts, it can usually be attributed to a mixed-up rhythm without the calm-active-calm-active-calm cadence.
There is something comforting about these rhythms as we move from one season to the next, incorporating seasonal festivals and holidays into our weekly plans. They help us to capture the city's vitality in each new season, but remind us when to slow down too.
Your daily rhythm sounds great. I'm really inspired by this post. Last fall and winter I got really comfortable *just staying home* because we didn't have a car and my baby was *really fussy* and my older girls are *real home-bodies*. But I have been talking about getting into some activities this year and I think they are interested.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the inspiration!
Thanks so much, I think we can learn a lot from your daily rhythms. Right now, we tend to either stay home all day, or stay out all day - it takes us so long to get organized and out the door, that we usually keep going once we're out there, rather than coming home and repeating the process after lunch! But that definitely results in overtired kids. The difficulty is that we're not in the middle of the city like you guys, so getting to and from wherever we're going tends to take some time by itself. Hmmmm. I'll definitely do some more thinking though!
ReplyDelete@ Patti - Thanks for your comment, Patti. I loved this idea of rhythms when I discovered it through some Waldorf reading. It is freeing in the sense that there are no timestamps associated with daily activities, but it provides a nice visualization of how we spend our days and weeks. And as you can tell from my sample week, it is relatively easy to be involved or not in most activities depending on how we're doing as a family. -Kerry
ReplyDelete@ Basbusa's Mama - Thanks so much for visiting and commenting. I'm glad you found this post helpful. Yes, I agree it would be difficult to gear up for big adventures twice daily if travel time were a consideration. I think the idea to rhythms, at least as defined by Waldorf, is to alternate between calm and active periods. So an active period could be a visit to the library or a walk in the woods, followed by free play or reading time. That's what I like so much about this type of "schedule:" it's so malleable. -Kerry
ReplyDeleteThis looks a lot like my daily schedule:)
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