School and Life Planning: Part 1

In past years I have used the Simply Charlotte Mason school planning ebook to help me plan for school. Since doing Classical Conversations, I don't have to plan all school subject but only a few. The biggest challenge then, is not the school planning itself but, the integration between life and school: what takes place when, who is responsible and how it gets accomplished. Having a scattered mind, I decided to force myself into order. I sat down with a big legal size notepad and set to write EVERYTHING that needs to be done on a regular school day. I divided the page in columns: time, activity, what I need to do the activity and what I need to prepare and what I need to buy. Armed with this page, I was ready to go.
The first activity is, of course, waking up. Waking up is always a chore around here and it can set all of us on a road to a bad day. The typical day finds me going around to all the bedrooms to wake kids up. More than once. Way more than once, getting louder with each subsequent visit. This year I am trying something new: alarm clocks. I'm going to get an alarm clock to each child and have them be responsible for waking up. It is going to take some time and some patience but I think it can work. The tricky part is going to be to make sure they turn their alarm clock on the night before (hopefully this won't be another too difficult battle).
While the kids are waking up (hopefully), I'll be in the kitchen making breakfast. Another change from last year. Traditionally, we have had prayer time immediately upon getting up: the kids drag themselves out of bed and unto their respective favorite places on the living room furniture and then prayer time begins. Usually after the first prayers and, by the time we get to our spiritual reading, they are mostly awake and... hungry. Then it starts the "are we almost done" and the "I am hungry" and "what is for breakfast". So, we are trying something new: to reverse the order. Breakfast will be ready to go upon their waking up. We will eat breakfast, do chores and then have prayer time and spiritual reading.

So alarm clocks go on my to buy list.

The second activity on my list is breakfast. What do I do to plan breakfast? a breakfast rotation that is healthy and easy but filling enough. Here is what I have come up with:

Mondays: Oatmeal (steel cut oats prepared on the crockpot)-this is going to take some adjustment since the kids (and I) don't really like oatmeal. It is good for you, easy and cheap-hopefully we will develop a taste for it.
Tuesdays: Eggs, bacon and toast (eggs are so versatile and so is bread :-) )
Wednesdays; Muffins and smoothies
Thursdays: Eggs,turkey patties(homemade) and toast
Friday: pancakes or waffles

I will also make sure we have granola on hand as well as some freezer items like breakfast cookies, bran muffins, oat muffins, breakfast sandwiches and breakfast burritos.

My next step regarding breakfast is collecting all my breakfast recipes and putting them all together in my kitchen binder together with grab and go grocery lists.