Homeschool Schedules
I often try to explain to my friends that I love organization, but I am an extremely unorganized person. I also love schedules, but I am a very random and on the go type of person. A lot of this comes because at random times throughout the week my husband will come home and ask if we want to go with him to put out mineral. Other times he will ask the kids if they want to go move cows with him or check water. I have to be super flexible and be willing to drop things quite often on a dime. Therefore; I like schedules, but they don’t always work for our family.
“For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
African Proverb
habitsforwellbeing.com
Nevertheless, I like to have a schedule so everyone develops a routine. I think the kids and I all need a routine so life can just go better and everyone knows what to expect. Last year, being our first year of homeschooling, we tried so many different kinds of schedules. One wise friend of mine, told me to plan out a sort of time period for school, but not exactly what we were going to do. Before she mentioned that to me I had planned out Math, English, and the other subjects for each child and what times I was going to do each of those with each child. That would’ve been a nightmare. I’m so grateful she told me to ditch the exact time period for subjects and just have times for when I would work on school.
One thing that I made sure to plan into our routine is a set time to catch up on housework. One friend told me when I was considering homeschooling that I just needed to be willing to let my house go. That is not something I can do. I have learned how to postpone cleaning my house until later, yet I need to have a somewhat put together house so I can think straight. For our new schedules I organized time on Fridays to clean our home as a family. We have been cleaning on Fridays for a while now. The kids clean a bathroom together and other chores while I catch up on cleaning and other things I need done.
Here is our schedules for each child for this next year. You might be surprised that some of my kids start sooner than others. I have found that certain of my children do way better if I let them wake up when they are ready. If I don’t the whole day is a fight. That child might have to go later with independent work, but it is way better than me trying to fight them because they’re tired. That’s also one of the things I hated about public school. I was waking my kids up at 6 am on a non rush day. It was awful. They were so tired. The only things I got to tell them were before they got on the bus were commands to get ready. I hated that. Our life is so much better when my kids can follow what schedule works best for them.
In addition to our schedules, I thought I would explain briefly our circle times. In the am circle time ideally for this next year we will say a prayer, do calendar and calendar songs, sing our national anthem, and do the Pledge of Allegiance. I used to have all of my circle time things all put together in the morning, but it took way too much time. I found that we weren’t getting enough time to finish our math and English homework. For this reason, I decided to really limit what we did before math and English work.
For pm circle time this year we will read the actual King James version of the scriptures together, writing workshop with our Write Shop level D curriculum, Spanish study with La Divertida, history or science with the Good and Beautiful, and a read aloud book. This seems like a lot. However, the Write Shop and Spanish should take under 30 minutes. Most of these things we are already used to doing, but we did add the Spanish and Write Shop this year. The Write Shop will take the place of other grammar study I did last year during circle time. Occasionally we will throw a church song we are trying to learn in with circle time to. I think it’s a good idea to set a timer for this to so I give the kids plenty of time to finish their homework, and so we aren’t still doing school when Dad gets home at night.