What does your homeschool schedule look like?
Yesterday, I shared what our plans are for our homeschool studies next year. Today I want to share with you what that looks like in the day to day. I'm warning you that my family's life is a little bit crazy. We're not your typical family, and our schedule reflects that. Isn't that one of the beauties of homeschooling?! It doesn't look like a public school schedule. This is what works for us.
Every year it looks a little bit different. Our plans last year worked well for a season. This year I have two Challenge students. I need to make sure I give them time to get their work done. So let's get to it...our schedule. Then I'll tell you how I keep track of what everyone needs to be doing!
Our Homeschool Schedule:
Part of what makes our homeschool schedule tricky is that my husband teaches music lessons from our house every afternoon we're not at Classical Conversations. It's not like your typical music lessons. It's like a family business because our whole family participates with his customers. While my husband works with his music student, the rest of the family typically enjoys hanging out with me and my kids! I love it.
That means we've got to make the most of our mornings.
7:30 am - The Early Bird...
The Sophomore will get an early start on his studies. He'll start with an hour of math before we start morning time. If he decides math isn't his favorite to start with, he'll choose another seminar to get out of the way before morning time starts.
8:30 am - Morning Time
Our extra students (I'm helping out a friend this year and homeschooling her two kids) will arrive at our house and be ready to go by 8:30 am. Everyone will meet in the kitchen for morning time. This is our favorite part of the day. Here's the gist of what we'll be doing:
- Start with reading Two Spies on a Rooftop
- Pray together
- Watch CNN Student News
- Discuss a famous artist with Simply Charlotte Mason Picture Study Portfolios
- Memorize a bit of Shakespeare
Our morning time takes about 45 minutes. At this point, my two challenge students will head off to independent work while I continue our collective studies with my three younger students.
- We'll talk about Science with Christian Kids Explore Biology on Monday and Friday
- We'll focus on Geography with Draw Europe on Wednesday
- We'll enjoy a bit of music with SQUILT on Thursday
After that, we'll follow it up with memory work review, spelling, and the Essentials of the English Language. The total time we'll need for the extended morning time is another 45 minutes.
10:00 am Independent Studies
At this point, it becomes a little bit of a circus as everyone will break to join the older two in independent studies. So let's pause real quick and talk about how to keep up with what everyone needs to accomplish during this time.
My older two have been really happy with the online planner from Homeschool Planet. I love this because they'll check off their work as they complete it, and I can check in online to see where they stand during the day (so can their Principal). It offers a simple way for them to plan out their week, and great accountability to get it done.
For the younger three, I will use spiral notebooks to assign their work each night for the next day. This will keep it simple to stay on the same page with each of them, as well as give them independence to work through their task list for the rest of the morning. Here's what will be in the spiral:
- Math
- Reading/Writing
- Handwriting
- Music
12:00 pm - Lunch Break
I am a totally scheduled eater. If I don't get food by noon, I'm a goner. We'll need a break from all of the learning fun by this point anyways.
12:30 pm - Read Aloud Time
We'll start the read aloud portion of our morning time after lunch. It's not really "morning time" anymore, but since I still think of it as that, I'll include it here as such! We'll take thirty minutes to read a little bit of The Mystery of History, and then a chapter of whatever book we're enjoying at the time.
Everyone is involved in this reading time again. You just can't keep the big kids away from a good story.
1:00 pm - Littles Finish, Bigs Continue
Since music students start showing up at 1pm, my goal is to have my younger students all the way done with their studies for the day at that point. If we've had a good morning, we should be finished. There will be days when it doesn't all get done by 1. It's a great goal though!
There's still work to be done for my Challenge students. At this point, my Challenge A student should have about an hours worth of work, and my Challenge II student will have a couple more hours. Some days, they'll get it done right after lunch. Other days, they might enjoy the music students, and wait until the evening to finish out their day's work.
The beauty of our schedule is that it allows our family to place highest priority on the relationships in our lives. By giving the best of our time to others, we have been so blessed in building deep and lasting relationships. There will always be more time on weekends if needed to complete work, but the reality is that we are raising life long learners. They will never be able to learn all that is possible in a week's worth of time, or a month's, or a year's.
So that's our plan for the year. I'll revisit the schedule at the end of the fall and adjust as needed. The beauty of running a small school is that we can make those adjustments without a lot of board meetings or red tape. I'm pretty close with the Principal after all.
Check out some other great posts from homeschool bloggers about what their schedule looks like!
7 Reasons Why Your Homeschool Schedule Doesn’t Work - Monique at Living Life and Learning
The Ultimate List of Free Quality Homeschool Planners- Schooling a Monkey
When Your Home school Plan Collapses-KT Brison at Lit Mama Homeschool
Homeschooling Bullet Journal- Stephanie Rose at Little Blog in the Country
Homeschool Planning When You Have To Work- Amy Lanham / Life as Lanhams
When the school bus looks tempting: making peace with your busy schedule - Ginny Kochis/Not So Formulaic
Our Homeschool Schedule & Rotations - Faith Filled Parenting
Homeschool Planning 101: First, Answer 2 Qs - Diane Lockman (The Classical Scholar)
Our 2016-17 Homeschooling Schedule & Curriculum - Jenny at Faith and Good Works
Creating a Homeschool & Work at Home Schedule That Works- Jody Smith/Simply Southern Sunshine
Finding Perfect Homeschool Planner for YOU - Tauna at Proverbial Homemaker
Homeschool Planning When Traveling - Stacy at Three Busy Bees
Betsy Strauss is an unexpected homeschooler, mother of three, who is in a relationship with a sweet man for life. She loves reading books, drinking coffee, and learning anything with her kids.
So organized and balanced! You are amazing, Betsy. Five students…I am in awe.
Couple questions regarding the Latin studies. I noticed that your seventh grade student is beginning the Henle Latin I. Prior to Henle did your students work through the ‘Latin Form’ series from Memoria? The Latin materials you designed are both beautiful and practical. Are those what you utilized instead? Are the fifth graders doing any Latin as of yet? Don’t mean to seem intrusive, just admittedly curious.
Thanks for the guidance!
Dee Dee
Dee Dee, I’ll be homeschooling five students by God’s grace alone. I’ve heard wonderful things about First Form Latin, but I’ve never used it. With my daughter that’s starting Henle this year, we’ve been slowly going through Henle I the last couple of years. We’ve made it through maybe lesson 4. I think that knowing her declension endings, conjugation endings, and vocabulary lay a wonderful foundation for starting this year more formally. That and a good English grammar study like we do in Essentials (or something like Shirley Grammar). We’ll keep working on the grammar of Latin with my younger ones, but I probably won’t start too much into the Henle with them. That’s partially because one is a struggling reader, and one will be completely new to me. I might throw in a sentence in Latin every now and then for them to parse like we do in Essentials. Hope that helps!
Where in your school day do you allow time for Challenge director prep? While the kids are doing their independent work?
I usually set aside one evening a week to prep for directing Challenge. I try to stay available for them during their independent work time, and I have a hard time stopping and starting my train of thought! Director prep can be working through the assignments with your Challenge student during the day though. It just depends on how much your students need you!
I like the idea of working solid in the morning to get school done which leaves time in the afternoon for
other pursuits. A couple of practical questions:
How do you fit chores in throughout your day? Do you have kids starting laundry in the mornings, and
doing breakfast and lunch dishes right after meals or do you just wait and tackle that after 1? Also, do you have any structured time for the kids to explore or give them ideas for free time instead of just wanting to play on the computer/ipad? Finally, how do you manage screens in your home?
Chores: I’m working on this…I won’t deny that it’s challenging. I’d like to do a looped schedule with the chores, and then assign a certain number of chores per kid per day. So they will just go to the list and do the next item that hasn’t been done. Does that make sense?! I’ll be writing about this soon, so stay tuned 🙂
Structured play: that’s a bit tricky for our schedule just because we have so many families coming and going during the afternoon time. With friends over, they build with legos, climb trees, or swing together. Occasionally friends bring screens, and all of the kids are on mine craft together. I don’t really mind that. So my kids don’t have as much opportunity to get lost in a screen. I try to keep the kids busy so I don’t have to manage the screen time. I don’t know if that’s helpful or not!!
This is such a great schedule. I am working on mine right now. I think the biggest change will be starting my morning by spending some quality time with my toddlers while the big kids work independently. I am hoping to fill the little ones love tanks first so I can really focus with the older kids as the day goes on!
That has worked well for me. The big kids always have something they can accomplish without me while I focus on the littles. I love the “filling their love tanks” idea. They can get pretty crazy on empty!
Hey Besty! I’m loving your blog!
Can you tell my why you chose Christian Kids Explore over Answers in Genesis Gods Design series?
Thank you!
Hey Brooke! Thanks so much for your encouragement. When I was choosing a science curriculum, I didn’t compare Christian Kids Explore to Answers in Genesis. I had used Christian Kids Explore Earth and Space before, and we enjoyed it, so I wanted to do another in the series. The Answers in Genesis series looks great too. There are so many wonderful resources, but you can’t do them all!
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Hi Betsy! I really like the idea of including a little bit of current event in the morning (kind of like reading the morning paper), and I’m happy to learn of CNN student news. You might have your older kids stand up, and give a 3 minute extemporaneous speech after they watch it. I’ve prepared a short workshop and ‘cheatsheet’ (free) on overcoming fear of public speaking if you want to incorporate it in your sophomore’s morning routine (http://learn.classicalscholar.com/courses/homeschool-speech). 🙂
That’s a great idea! I’ve loved the speech opportunities that my kids have received being a part of Classical Conversations. Even so, it’s great to have other ways to practice at home to get better. Thanks for sharing!
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