How to Have an Enjoyable 4-Day Homeschool Week

There are countless ways that a family can choose to homeschool. We probably all realized that when we first began and started researching how to begin homeschooling!

My husband has a four day work week most of the time. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to figure out how to make a 4-day homeschool week possible, so that we could use Fridays for extra family time as much as we could.

We are now in year three of homeschooling, and I really enjoy the routine we have going….but it took some planning and re-planning along the way!

Year 1:

Our first year was a lot of trial and error. We used Gather Round Homeschool as the spine of our curriculum, which was already designed to work well with a 4-day homeschool week. So that worked great.

We did four days of math each week and then Fridays were family days and “Fun Fridays”. Fun Fridays were the days we took field trips, did holiday crafts and activities, or extra things like science experiments that we didn’t get to earlier.

Honestly, year one went better than I expected. Ha. But…I had been learning more about Charlotte Mason’s approach to education and some of her ideas had peaked my interest.

I’m a very eclectic homeschooler (if it has to have a label…which it doesn’t!). I don’t prescribe to all of Charlotte Mason’s philosophies, however, I loved the idea of providing a “feast” of rich and varied topics. I wanted our homeschool to be a place of learning more than what they could receive in a regular classroom. More as in value, not quantity. And our first year just wasn’t that.

Year 2:

So I did some planning and reorganizing of our routine and subjects, deciding to go with a Breakfast Box and a Morning Basket time in our second year. Yes, both.

The breakfast box was a basket I sat on the kitchen table in the mornings that I filled with unit related or holiday coloring/activity books, picture books, poppers, flashcards, puzzles and doodle pads.

Our routine the second year allowed the kids to sleep until they woke up and then when everyone was up, we began. The idea of the breakfast box was to give the kids who got up earlier things to work on quietly while they began their breakfast and we were waiting for everyone join us. They could also use these items while I was reading. It was during breakfast that I would do our Bible reading for the day and read out of a book called Everyday Graces.

Morning Basket is what we did after breakfast and after everyone had changed into their clothes for the day. Here is where I tried to add more of the extra “feast” topics such as poetry, Shakespeare, and art study…but I also used this time for a history lesson twice a week since it was a family subject. Then it became the time where I did read aloud as much as possible, too.

After this we continued with our Gather Round Unit Study lesson and math.

Still a 4-day homeschool week. Only this year, our Friday became a co-op day. We found a Charlotte Mason based co-op that met every Friday afternoon for a couple of hours. Here we learned hymns, folk songs, handicrafts (such as embroidery, looming, and brush stroke watercolor painting), art study, and homeopathy.

I loved how much more of a variety of topics the girls were getting during our second year but it still had it’s downfalls.

• As enjoyable as co-op was, I felt like my girls would have actually learned more of what we were talking about at home. Being in a group of kids in a park setting was highly distracting.
• Having a Breakfast Box and a Morning Basket started to take too much time and feel like a burden for me to keep up with. That’s not what I was going for, but I didn’t know how to fix it yet.
• Even though I had lots of topics I planned to loop through during our morning basket, I found that we pretty much got stuck in a rut of doing history, a read-loud, and occasionally a poet study. It didn’t turn out quite how I imagined in my head!
• We weren’t finishing our school day until 3:00 some days, and while some people may be ok with that if it’s only a 4-day homeschool week, I wasn’t. One of our (many) reasons to homeschool was to enjoy the freedom it provides and to have more time for the kids to play and be kids!

Year 3:

So that brings us to year three. Our current year as I type this!

You may remember that I mentioned at the beginning that I enjoy what we have going this year. And I meant it!

So what’s changed again?

What are we doing now that feels like it solved the downfalls listed above?

Well, let me show you!

Below is a copy of our daily routine:

The changes I’ve made are:

Using a Routine as Opposed to a Schedule

One of the things I changed up this year was creating a routine. This just means we follow the same order of things each day without paying attention to what time it is.

With one exception. Get up time and Bed Time. Maybe that’s two exceptions? Well, either way. 🙂

This year 8:00 is the latest anyone sleeps M-Th (and even sometimes Fridays!). We try to get started around 8:00 every morning and then just follow the routine after that. This has been working just as I had hoped!

It’s helping us finish up earlier in the day and has eliminated the need for our breakfast box. More on that in a bit.

I also love that I’m not glued to watching the clock all day.

Maximizing the Morning Basket

As I mentioned previously, the combo of the breakfast box with the morning basket ended up taking up more of our day than I wanted it to. This year I wanted to fix that while still being able fit in a wide variety of topics and subjects.

So I learned more about loop scheduling and created a morning basket plan that will allow us to cover what I hoped to but in less time. I discuss in more detail how to loop subjects in a morning basket in this post!

Here’s what our morning basket looks like now:

As you can see we are able to cover Bible, character studies, history, art, learn a hymn and folk song each month, and even practice some parts of speech with mad-libs EVERY WEEK!

Now I do often have morning basket on Friday mornings, too, because it’s something we enjoy and it’s something easily done during breakfast, which we’re going to eat anyway. 🙂

I know that makes morning basket technically 5 days a week….but there are weeks that if we have plans on that Friday, I will either skip what’s on Friday that week or just add it in another day. It’s super easy and super flexible.

It is working so well for us and I finally feel like I’m consistently covering everything I want to!

Making Friday A Loop

Maybe you’re wondering what in the world I’m talking about. Didn’t I already talk about loops with our morning basket? How many loops does one person need? Isn’t this a lot to keep track of?

All good questions if you’re asking.

Ultimately there were a few more things I really wanted to do with my girls, but didn’t want it to extend our days any longer. My solution was creating a Friday Loop.

The additional things I wanted to do were:

• nature study
• board games
• art projects
• poetry tea time for practice memorizing and reciting poems and bible passages

So, basically, if we have plans to take a field trip or go out as a family on any Friday then that is what we do. I don’t stress about missing our Friday Loop.

However, when we don’t have plans, we do an activity from our loop. So if one Friday we played educational board games for awhile in the morning, then the next Friday we would do an art activity, and then the following Friday we’d take a nature walk, and then have a poetry tea time morning the next Friday, etc….it just continues in a loop. 🙂

If you do something from your loop every Friday, then those are activities you could get to up to once a month! The activities I put here, though, are things I’m ok with getting to less often.

I also think it’s worth noting that even on the Friday mornings that we do something from our loop, we are always still finished before lunch unless we go somewhere for a nature walk. Often it’s even earlier than that. So our Friday’s are still pretty free even after the activities!

Does that make sense? I hope so! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments if it doesn’t!

Not Trying To Do Everything Every Day

I think sometimes we believe that in order for our kids not to “fall behind” (a topic for a whole other blog post) we need to cram as much in to every day as possible. That we should be doing school for as long as kids in traditional school. And, believe me, as a former public school teacher, this was a hard thought process to break.

Homeschooling is so much more rich and wonderful than cramming a bunch of workbooks and papers into every day, though.

Up until this year, we used Gather Round for everything but math and the other subjects wrapped into our morning basket. I wanted to add in more language arts this year so I also added the language art curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful.

We aren’t doing them both every day though. The way I keep our days shorter is by alternating the two. You can see by our daily routine that we do our Gather Round Unit Study on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Good and the Beautiful LA is Mondays and Wednesdays. It’s taking us a couple of months to go through a unit study now instead of 4-5 weeks, but I’m ok with that! We should still get through at least 3 units this year!

Choosing Not To Do An Academic Co-Op

This one was a personal choice for us this year. We enjoyed our academic Charlotte Mason co-op last year, but this year we are choosing to spend our time outside of the home doing things other than school-like activities.

We are in extracurriculars and in a homeschool group that just meets up for field trips and playdates on many Friday afternoons. I have an eye on a co-op with a musical theater program for next year possibly….but I’m totally content with what we are doing right now.

Joining a homeschool co-op can be great! My advice would just be to always join for the right reasons. Don’t do it because you feel like it’s necessary!

For Those Concerned About Getting 180 Days

Depending on where you live and what your state’s requirements are for homeschooling, you may be wondering if you will get in the required number of days this way. Here are my suggestions:

• One
  • It may be necessary for you to do school year round with holiday breaks and your Fridays off. Just take the time to sit down and do the math on how many 4-day weeks you will need in the year to hit your required number of days, then plan accordingly.
• Two
  • With this said, I’m a firm believer that “school” exists outside of book work. Even if we aren’t in our math or language arts books on Friday, I personally think they usually count towards a school day.
  • If you’re utilizing nature studies, art, poetry, board games, field trips or the like on a Friday then I believe that absolutely gets counted in school attendance!

Something to keep in mind is that even kids in traditional school have days that aren’t spent completely in books. They have classroom distractions, busy work for assessments, assemblies in the gym, classroom parties, emergency drills, substitute “easy” days, and field trips of their own….and it all counts towards their days if they are in the building.

I was a public school teacher at one time (and a sub before that!), so I know a bit about it. 🙂

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To recap:

• Monday – Thursday
  • Morning Basket
  • Unit Study (2 days) and Language Arts (2 days)
  • Math
• Friday
  • Morning Basket and One Loop Activity (Poetry, Art Project, Nature Study, Board Games)
  • OR Family Fun Day

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There you have it!

How we have a 4-day homeschool week that we really enjoy!

Get these daily routine planning pages for yourself!

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Happy Planning!

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