Homeschool Scheduling:

Organizing Your Time To Suit Everyone

Homeschool scheduling can be a useful way of organizing homeschool. The week ahead can seem a bit vast if you've got nothing planned!

Some families are very into homeschool organizing, and it's probably true that most of us find some sort of homeschool schedule useful - even if we don't call it that!

When everyone around you is getting up at seven, off to work and back home at six, you can feel rather embarrassed when the curtains are still drawn at 11 o'clock.

Tip: I get Rob to open the curtains for me before he goes to work!

Homeschool Schedules

Some sort of routine probably suits most people - but, if that's not you, you don't need to follow one. Timetables are essential in school for organizing groups of children into sensible time blocks. But, when you come to schedule your day, you can afford to follow your child's interest for as long - or as short - as it takes.

When they were younger, William and Catherine had probably lost interest in something in the time it took to put their shoes on.

On the other hand, they probably started a fascinating conversation on how pond skaters sit on water over Breakfast.

So setting rigid homeschooling schedules can be a bit counter-productive.

What scheduling you decide on will relate to the homeschooling methods you decide to use.

How to Plan Your Home School Schedule

If you're in the US, you need to check whether your State requires you to make homeschooling schedules that cover a certain number of days per year or hours per week.

The best place to start organizing your time is by looking at a typical week. Some homeschooling schedules are very structured, with hours for a specific subject on a certain day.

When the children are young, many homeschooling families set about organizing homeschool schedules for the morning and leave the afternoons free. What would suit you?

You need to plan into your schedule the subjects you think must be there. Math twice a week? Scheduling a couple of short sessions usually works best.

You can always sketch out a few draft home school schedules and then see how it goes. Some things will, no doubt, work better than others - but you can always change and adapt schedules until you reach the right formula for your family.

If you'd like some tips for making a homeschool planner, look here.

Our Homeschool Schedule

When they were really young, our day was fairly relaxed. We largely went with the flow, using the wonderful opportunity homeschooling gives you just to do some reading, play in the garden, perhaps make a few Thunderbird models and work on our Sea Creatures for Kids project you can see in our free homeschool unit studies.

Homeschool Unit Studies

Of course, that meant we naturally covered lots of subjects without scheduling them in or thinking too much about it.

As you'll know, even getting them to the library can take a full morning - and you might be looking for insects in the garden all afternoon!

But I would always make sure we had a few fixed points in our week that we had to cover in our schedule.

We would always do some Math (agh!). You can see how our homeschool math curriculum rapidly became full of fun math activities here.

Homeschool Daily Schedule

Homeschool Math

We would definitely make sure our week included organizing some reading in our home school schedule.

Writing - well, no one can say I didn't try! I set about organizing loads of different activities - easy with Catherine; William was, well, a different story, as they say.

Science we covered without thinking about it, but we had a lovely arrangement with another homeschooling family where our home school schedules involved going round every other week to try out our latest science experiments. Double the fun!

At the risk of major embarrassment, I'm going to show you what Catherine (age nearly 9) wrote in her homeschooling diary for January 20th 2009:

I think the only thing the school Inspector might have been impressed by in this home school schedule is the number of wees!

Now you may suit a stricter home school schedule and that's fine.

I followed almost a timetable at home when Mum was homeschooling me. I answered workbooks and each day her scheduling would cover different subjects I had to do.

Her schedules also included a lot of time for drawing (which I loved) and plenty of nature activities (ditto).

I loved being taught at home.

As the children have grown older, so our homeschooling scheduling has changed. You'll probably find that too.

Tips for Organizing A Home School Schedule

If you want to see how we spend our time now, I'll put our homeschool daily schedule here. You might also like some suggestions for when homeschooling schedules don't work!

I'll also include more ideas for what might include in your schedules, whatever the age of your child, when we look at organizing your time to suit everyone in my advice on making a home school schedule.

However you decide to plan your days, I'm sure the more you can get your child involved in homeschool scheduling the better!

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