How to Organize your Homeschool Schedule
How to Organize your Homeschool Schedule
Scheduling and knowing how to organize your homeschool schedule can be extremely daunting. It can be tempting to throw the schedule to the wind and just wing it. While that can work for some families, for the majority of homeschoolers that can be risky and can set your family up for frustration down the road. Deciding how to organize your homeschool schedule is a great first step to a successful homeschool experience for parents and children alike. With all of that being said, remember that flexiblity and grace are two of the keys to a great educational experience.
Where do I start?
If you’re using a curriculum, it is really all ready planned out for you, you just need to figure out how you want to work it into your schedule. Remember, in Colorado we are required to have 172 days of school with an average of 4 hours a day.
I start my planning process by figuring out when I want to start our school year and when we want it to end, breaks, vacations, business trips, family visits, etc. (no need to follow the local districts schedule, we all have 365 days to get our 172 days in). Decide if you are going to school year round or within a 9 month schedule. Remember, if you’d rather have winter off instead of the hot, hot days in summer – do it! If you want to do a couple things over the summer like math and reading, do it!
I take each curriculum and look at how many lessons are in each one. Say one has 120 lessons I decide how many days a week we are going to need to do that particular book to finish in the allotted time and put it in my planner (I also take into account which student this class is for and if they will want to finish faster or if they’d prefer to go at a slower pace). I have been known to combine smaller lessons together to make the class shorter.
How far out should I plan?
Sometimes, I plan weekly. Sometimes, monthly. Lately I have been planning the whole year at once. The whole year at once works best with an online planner that is easily edited, I would not recommend it with a paper and definitely not pen (unless it’s pretty & erasable LOL)! If you are new to homeschooling, consider planning in shorter time spans until you find your groove and are comfortable with your curriculum and have your routines established.
You can also journal what you did that day instead of planning it all out in advance. For this you can use a composition notebook, a pretty journal, or a planner from Mardel, Well Planned Gal, or even your grocery store. For me this is a bit tougher once the kids are in middle and high school.
You can get a journal for each student as they are able to read and write or as they get older it is great for them to learn how to use a planner so they can learn how to manage their own time. Let them help you record what they did each day or even plan it out with you and then on their own.
You can block schedule and do all your history in one semester and science the next , or do them both all year. You can alternate days you do certain subjects (Science on M & W, History on T & Th, PE & Music on Fridays). This is YOUR FAMILY’S plan, make it work for you!
Get some pretty pens and page markers and stickers and make it fun!
Enjoy the Journey!
