Homeschool Scheduling (Part 2)

By Debra @ NotebookingPages.com

Once you have figured out what you want to include in your homeschool schedule, it is time to lay out your week. We have done this in a variety of ways over the years using a variety of organization tools from computer programs and online planners to customized assignment books and stacks of index cards. Regardless of the "tools", the basis of my planning has remained the same now for the last few years.

Maybe you are thinking that we should instead be looking at how to lay out each day first. In the beginning, I tried to plan my days like a traditional school with everyday looking primarily the same covering each subject everyday. Let's just say that did not work. You do not need to cover every subject everyday - not even close! Step outside of the box and evaluate what YOU think is adequate for each subject or activity you and your children want to pursue. Some subjects may be everyday and that's fine. For most though, I think you will find that if you can do an every-other-day or twice-a-week type scheduling, you will find your time better spent.

Laying Out Your Homeschool Week

What does our typical homeschooling week look like? I will let you know when we have one! :) The first lesson about homeschooling schedules is this - you will never have two weeks that look exactly the same.

Practically speaking though, what does our week look like on paper? In our "on paper" schedule we plan for interruptions, for unexpected guests, and for emergencies by not having so rigid a schedule that the whole plan has to be thrown out the window every time we get thrown a curve ball. We do not plan our weeks by Monday-Friday. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that over the years my husband's work schedule has been such that we cannot count on anything staying the same on the calendar. There is no such thing as a typical Monday, Tuesday, etc. In addition, with regular doctor and orthodontist visits each month, the days of each week's outings is constantly changing. Three of my adopted children have visits every other week with their biological mother and these days may change depending on her work schedule. Add a few other normal activities and ministries to the week and you can see why we desperately need a flexible schedule. I'll just venture to guess that you need a flexible schedule too!

Are You a Boxchecker?

I have never been able to squeeze everything in for every subject in the typical five day schedule. I always felt guilty every time we would get "behind" and could not check off all of the assignment boxes in those well planned curriculum guides we used in our early days of homeschooling. When we would get behind, we would have days of playing catch-up that would last well into the late afternoon hours. We became so burnt out on homeschooling. One day I finally stopped trying to do it all. Have you had one of those moments where you begin to wonder why you are homeschooling at all? You begin to remember all of the wonderful reasons for starting this journey and wonder where you made the wrong turn. What I finally realized is that I was only "behind" if I chose to measure our success by how many boxes I could check off of our assignment sheets or if I based our progress on someone else's idea for what the typical family should do in five days (or a week or a month or a year for that matter!). Just as there is no such thing as a typical child, there is no such thing as a typical family either. Each is so unique! So I came up with a different plan for our family - one that would actually work for my family and give us some much needed flexibility.

Setting Up Rotations

I set up a rotation for each subject or activity based on what I determined to be our goals and time needed to meet those goals. I will look at what I want to accomplish for each subject and then determine how to divide that work into daily chunks for each section or unit of study. We use Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, . . scheduling with Monday-Friday being the days we actually have lessons. Each subject or combination of subjects may have a different number of days to complete a rotation. (Saturdays are saved for working around the house and catching up on the week's errands.) An uninterrupted 6 day rotation for a particular subject may start on Monday and will finish at the end of the following Monday if nothing happens in the middle of that rotation to cause it to go longer. If something happens during those six days that causes us to have to halt our school work during a particular day, we simply pick up the next day where we left off the day before or use some of our free afternoons to finish up. It is an extremely flexible plan and works very well for our family.

Charlotte Mason - Shorter Lessons

We also try to apply many of Charlotte Mason's methods in our homeschooling which has been very effective in the area of scheduling and laying out our week. Most effective, as it applies to homeschool scheduling, are the "short lessons". Employing short lessons has reduced our formal lesson time to just the morning hours for my children. This takes some work and diligence on both the part of the child and the teacher, but is so worth the effort. The afternoons are then free for all of them to practice music, art, crocheting, sewing, woodworking, sports or any other activity or hobby that interests them. There is time for play and exploring. There is time for all of those hands-on projects we have always had to set aside. There is time for nature walks - my favorite! Keeping lessons short in the morning demands diligence from both myself and the children. It definitely requires training. So although we do plan for interruptions and flexibility in our scheduling, I also do everything I can to protect our morning routines. It is not often that we have to stray from our routine, but there are days when we may decide to dig in to a particular study longer than we had anticipated. For those days, the love learning takes the higher ground and the planned schedule gets moved to the next day.

Sample Homeschooling Schedule

Here's a SAMPLE schedule. Let me emphasize that I do not live in a box (and neither do you!). I live in the real world that is not sheltered from life's ups and downs, interruptions, changes and sweet miracles. So I will guarantee that by the time you view this schedule, it will have changed somehow for our family. Remember this when planning your schedules. Be flexible enough for life to happen. Otherwise, you will feel like you are living in constant chaos every time something does not go according to your plan. Use your plan as a guide. Do not become enslaved to it.

Click Here for Sample Schedule

This sample schedule shows you how we might fit time in for each subject during the day or week. For each subject (or combination of subjects), I create a plan that has general goals divided into days - sometimes up to 6 days for some subjects. This plan changes frequently according to a particular child's needs or something we find we need to do differently because a particular aspect of some curriculum may need tweaking. Here are some examples of how I might divide the days:

Bible:

Math:

Formal Writing:

It has taken some time for me to get comfortable with this sort of scheduling. It does not necessarily fit well on a piece of paper or into a teacher's lesson planning book without a little creativity. It works well for us though. We get far more meaningful studying accomplished than the days where I tried to conform to a rigid schedule and get all of the little boxes checked off in my assignment sheets. Now I fill in my assignment sheet each day as it happens.

Click Here for Sample Assignment Sheet.

Click Here for Our Free Resources - a variety of free notebooking pages, homeschool charts, and printables.
Click Here for the online planner "CM Organizer" that would works well with this sort of planning.

I hope this encourages you to find a schedule that works for your family. When I realized that homeschooling was not just something my family did but that it was who we are, I allowed myself to become more flexible in looking for a plan that would work despite all of the unknowns. Remember it is easier to make a plan "fit your family" that it is to make your "family fit a plan".