Our Homeschool Schedule (And 9 FREE Templates for You!)
As a mom of three, I knew I was going to need some sort of schedule to organize our school days! Plus, living in Florida, we’re required to submit some kind of daily schedule with our portfolio. (At least this is true for the umbrella school we are using this school year.)
Having once been a classroom teacher, the idea of creating a schedule wasn’t as daunting to me as it may be to others, but trying to figure out how to make it work with my own kids of multiple ages presented some challenges!
Once I knew what curriculum we were going to be doing, I got to work trying to create something that I thought would work for us.
Our Homeschool Schedule
Overall, our homeschool schedule has worked well and we follow it most days…except for one little thing. The times!
Even though I created our schedule with time blocks, we don’t follow them strictly. In fact, we barely follow them at all! In reality, our “schedule” is probably more of a routine.
What I mean by that is on school days we usually complete the tasks on the schedule in the order listed, but I’m not really too concerned with what time it is. If everyone is up early, then we get started early. The same is true if everyone gets up late. This is the kind of flexibility that makes homeschooling so special!
In the classroom, time periods are important for various reasons, however, at home it’s been much less important. At least this is true for our family. If your family has a crazy busy schedule, or you are working at home with strict working hours, then sticking to the times might be very useful and important!
The following is our current homeschool schedule (our routine!):
A Closer Look
Here’s our homeschool schedule in a little more detail to give you a better feel for what we’re doing.
5:30-7:30
I don’t always get up this early, but I try. I really do. Since I’m really great at staying up too late, though, getting up at 5:30 is a challenge!
However, as an introvert, I’m a much happier person when I wake up before everyone. This way I can have some time to wake up and do something for me before I’m bombarded with questions and needs for the rest of the day! If you’re an introverted momma, then you probably understand what I’m talking about!
7:30 – 9:00
My girls usually get up around 7:30 or 8:00, and not all at the same time of course. One choice I’ve decided to make is no television before school. I’ve found that my kids are more focused for school work if we keep it off. However, this is what works for us, so you can decide what works best for you!
We usually eat breakfast before we get started with our Bible but if it’s a late morning then sometimes we do them together. We are using More Than Words by Masterbooks this year, so it’s more like a morning devotional than “school”.
I usually send them up to get dressed after this. This usually takes much longer than it should. š
9:00 – 9:30
While calendar time is absolutely not necessary, especially in a homeschool, it’s something that I enjoyed when I taught in the public school and have chosen to do with my girls at home…at least while they’re young!
We only spend 10-12 minutes at it, but in that time we:
- go over the date
- talk about calendar skills
- review days of the week, months, and seasons
- learn a little spanish
- practice skip counting
- review writing skills with a morning message
It goes fast, but the repetition of these things really helps them learn a lot over the course of just a year!
9:30 – 11:30
After calendar we “gather round” in the living room to for our Gather Round lesson of the day. This is my personal favorite part of our homeschool day. I absolutely love this curriculum so far and how all of my girls can do so much of their learning together!
We start with the whole group lesson followed by some YouTube videos to really given them a visual of what we’ve discussed. Sometimes we stick to the pre-chosen videos I’ve put on our playlist and other days we may venture out to some other ones if they have questions about something else!
After this we usually head back into the school room to work on our student notebooks. I have a child in Early Elementary(8), Early Reader(5), and Pre-Reader(3).
At first, I tried working with all three of them at the same time but it caused a lot of frustration for everyone…myself included! I’ve found what works for us is working with my 8 and 5 year old together while my 3 year old plays or works on letter activities and then we switch. While I’m working with the 3 year old, the big two get in some silent reading time.
11:30 – 12:00
Once we all finish Gather Round we get a snack and I read aloud to them while they eat. Often, these are picture or chapter books that go along with our unit study, but occasionally they are just a good fun read aloud. š
12:00 – 12:30
Depending on how late in the day it is at this point (remember I don’t adhere to the times very strictly!), we will do some sort of art, music, or P.E.. This can be an Art for Kids Hub drawing, a creative drawing out of our Oodles of Doodles book, dancing to our favorite songs or unit related music, or playing games outside, free play outside, a walk to the neighborhood playground, a bike ride, or Cosmic Kids Yoga.
12:30 – 1:00
I do my best to feed the little people by 1:00. š
1:00 – 2:30
When I was first trying to figure out the homeschool schedule, the part I struggled with the most was how to get through math which each of my girls. I knew they all would need me to work with them one-on-one, but they are at three different levels, so doing that all together sounded like a punishment for me!
We ended up taking a learning center approach to this time and it works well!
We have 3 learning stations:
- Math with Mom/Phonics/Cursive
- Learning Apps on the iPad
- Enrichment
- Vocabulary and Spelling Words
- easel work
- worksheets (abc order, sentence building)
- flashcard making
- playdough
- letter magnets
- Pocket Chart Poem Activities
- find letters or sight words
- identify parts of speech
- add extra lines to the poem
- find and make rhyming words
- there are many skills that can be practiced here!
- Vooks or Epic Read-Alouds on our Desktop Computer (or iPad)
- Calendar
- Flash Cards
- make them for math, spelling, or vocabulary (like stated above)
- practice ones already made
- memory game with them
- Make 10 Card Game
- Tangrams or other Math Manipulatives
- Legos (for example: I challenged them to create the Great Wall fo China on the day we learned about China in the Asia Unit Study)
- Vocabulary and Spelling Words
Occasionally I just make the third station free play, too and then just pick one of those options on any given day. The options are whatever you want them to be and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time!
Setting it up this way, though, provides me the time, mostly uninterrupted, to work with each of my children one-on-one.
I don’t set an exact time for how long we spend at each learning station. It’s really just based on how long it takes me to do math with each child. It’s usually 20-30 minutes which is why I have it taking an hour and a half on the schedule.
2:30 – 4:00
Free time for the kiddos! They can pretty much play whatever they want at this point. Sometimes this is when we have our classes outside of the house such a dance or horseback riding as well.
If we happened to need to go somewhere in them morning, an appointment or playdate with co-op friends, we may spend this time making up some of what we missed. It just depends on the day!
This is also where mom gets a slight break…well from the kids anyway. š I often catch up on blogging, emails, appointment making, and laundry during this time!
4:00 – 5:00
Somewhere in here is when I have the girls start cleaning up the playroom and finish any of their responsibilities for the day. I also begin the dinner making process! Nothing super enlightening here…just normal life stuff!
5:00 – 8:00
The rest of the day is just dinner and family time. We might head back outside for awhile, watch some T.V. , or play games. Every Friday is “Pizza Family Game Night”! It’s a tradition that we love and the I hope will continue for a very long time.
After 8:00
Mom gets a break! Hurray!
Speaking of Fridays…
One thing to know about our routine is that we only use this schedule M-Th. Fridays are “Fun Fridays”!
This is when we do:
- field trips/extra playdates
- STEM activities
- seasonal/holiday crafts and activities
- cooking and baking (a favorite around here!)
- games
- a free day!
And since Fridays are also our previously mentioned “Pizza Family Game Night”…it’s probably my girls’ favorite day of the week. š
The 3 Year Old
Some of you with younger children might be wondering how it goes with my littlest during all of this.
Well….some days are great and some just aren’t!
My little one is so excited about doing school and loves working. No joke. But mostly on worksheets and activities. She would set and do workbooks with me for an hour!
However, she struggles with doing things independently sometimes when I’m trying to work with her big sisters. She struggles during our whole group Gather Round lesson. And sometimes she struggles through Bible. This struggling looks like interrupting, whining, needing to be on my lap, making noises, etc. She’s not really trying to be disruptive…she’s just 3!
I’m not strict with her on paying a lot of attention to our whole group stuff. I keep her in the room but she is often playing with something else. I would swear she wasn’t paying any attention, but she’s come back later telling me things she heard us talking about!
When she comes over to me when I’m working with the other two, I try to get her to go back to what she’s doing, but if not, I just sit her on my lap and tell her she needs to be quiet if she’s going to be with the big girls. Usually this satisfies her enough and often she’ll go back to playing shortly after.
Other times, I hand her the iPad for a learning app or put her in front of the T.V. with some LeapFrog, Number Blocks, or other favorite learning show! This is real life guys.
I understand the extra challenges that arise when homeschooling with really little ones in the house, but don’t be discouraged! Try to embrace it, give yourself grace, end school early some days if need be, and remember that they’ll be big before you know it!
Now for Those Free Homeschool Schedule Templates!
If you need a template to get started, then I have just that! Below you’ll find a free set with a blank template of the one I used above, along with eight others in different arrangements and page layouts.
Some allow for up to 5 kids.
Some have slots for times while others don’t.
Some are set up to be used for individual kids (like mine above) and some are just for an overall schedule for everyone.
It gives you some flexibility to plan in a way that will work for your family!
Here are 3 examples of what’s in the free set of schedule templates for you to see a little closer!
I hope this has given you some inspiration to get started on your own homeschool schedule!
Drop a comment below and let me know what works for you!
Happy Scheduling!
Hi. I would love to use the template for the free homeschool schedules but Iām not able to click on them or download them. Thanks for your help!
Karla
Hi! If you scroll to the very bottom of the page there should be a spot where you can sign up to receive them! If you look again and don’t see it, let me know!