The following guide is a post from Homeschool Classroom founder and editor, Angie (also of Many Little Blessings).
One of the biggest headaches (or joys) for many homeschooling families is coming up with the homeschool schedule – whether that means that it’s a daily homeschool schedule, weekly homeschool schedule, or a schedule for the whole homeschool year.
Sometimes, it’s a blessing to just see what others are doing so you can take some of their ideas, sprinkle in your own ideas, mix it all up, and then come up with a schedule that fits your family perfectly. We’re excited to try to help you with that venture by offering you The Ultimate Guide to Homeschool Scheduling.
The Ultimate Guide to Homeschool Scheduling
Daily Homeschool Schedules and Planning
Do you think everyone is busy schooling by 8 am each morning? Just remember – everyone’s schedules look different, and Kris proves to us that you can homeschool successfully even if you aren’t starting as early at the local schools.
Kendra is helping us with steps to consider while figuring out your daily homeschooling schedule (in a post called Homeschool Scheduling 101), as well as to share her daily schedule with us.
Are you a Charlotte Mason style homeschooler? Check out Cindy’s suggestions for a Typical Day in a Charlotte Mason homeschool at Our Journey Westward.
It can be easy to get busy while homeschooling and forget to really educate your whole child (not just the parts we think need to be worked on). Michelle talked about using Head, Heart, and Hands: Daily Rhythms and Educating the Whole Child.
A daily schedule with preschoolers can look different for everyone, but this is the daily schedule (and I mean the whole day!) for preschool at home from Motherhood on a Dime.
Roan shared her daily schedule for homeschooling, on the occasion of the beginning of her 11th year of homeschooling!
Weekly Homeschool Schedules and Planning
I have often Googled about homeschooling schedules as I have tweaked our own homeschooling schedule. Each time, I have found the suggestions from Oklahoma Homeschooling to be invaluable. They have PDF samples available. Just go to this page on their site and scroll until you find the “Schedules” links in the first grouping of links (under the heading of “Homeschool Forms created by Cindy Downes”). I would link directly to the PDFs, but that’s just not polite, so you’ll have to scroll for yourself.
I love that this weekly homeschool schedule from Our Journey Westward even has a table laid out of which subjects the students complete each day.
Broken down by the scheduled subjects for each school day, I shared our weekly homeschool scheduled for a 1st grader, 5th grader, and 6th grader last year at Many Little Blessings.
Even if you don’t subscribe to the Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling, I found the sample weekly homeschool schedules from Simple Charlotte Mason to be an amazing jumping off point for writing out my own weekly schedule.
Yearly Homeschool Schedules and Planning
Need some guidance for tackling a year’s worth of planning? Kim from Not Consumed has specific steps to offer in 10 Steps for Planning Your Homeschool Year.
Barb from Harmony Arts Mom shares a very detailed account of how to plan for an entire year worth of homeschooling. This is an amazing guide not to miss at Curriculum Choice.
Toni from The Happy Housewife shares the way that she schedules her homeschooling. Considering that she has homeschooled for over 11 years and has a large family, her advice comes from a lot of experience.
Want to see some possible options for laying out your homeschool calendar for the school year? Roan from Joyful Always talks about some of the most common options for laying out your 180 days (or whatever is required where you live).
Ready to be inspired to sit down and schedule out the whole year in just a weekend or two? Kendra shares her tips of how she plans her whole homeschool year at once.
If that wasn’t enough motivation, Mystie from Simple Convivial shares a whole series of posts about planning a whole school year at a time. (She was actually inspired by Kendra’s post mentioned above.)
Maybe it’s just the organizing junkie in me speaking, but this color coded progress chart to map out a school year at Amongst Lovely Things made me have heart palpitations when I saw it. Love it!
In what is probably a testament to that organizing junkie in me, I shared on Many Little Blessings about the way we previously organized our homeschooling papers and materials in what was a move to both organize and schedule out our homeschool year.
Homeschool scheduling certainly looks different when you get to the high school level. That’s one reason that I loved this way from The Happy Housewife to organize homeschool high school credits for planning purposes.
With printouts for planning for the year as well as for weeks at a time, FiveJ’s is an amazing source for homeschool planning printables.
Still just not sure where to start? Mary offers us a light at the end of the tunnel with ways to get a grip on homeschool planning.
Other Homeschool Schedules and Planning Tips: Events and Field Trips
Field trips can be an amazing addition to your homeschooling adventure. Kris is a master of planning field trips for her homeschooling group, and she is sharing what she has learned about planning a successful homeschooling field trip with us.
Field trips aren’t the only fun group activity you can plan. You can plan out a homeschool group party by taking these steps into consideration before your big (or small) event.
If you’re helping to plan your homeschool group’s co-op, then it might help you to check out these easy tips to help you plan a great homeschool co-op year from Tonya of The Traveling Praters.
Other Homeschool Schedules and Planning Tips: Various Topics and Logistics
Monday mornings can be tough. After a weekend of rest (or even worse – a weekend full of plans), it can be hard to ease back into a week of school. Julianna shared tips with us to make Monday mornings more successful for your homeschool.
There are so many opportunities for adding extras to your homeschooling. In fact, there are so many that there just isn’t enough time to do it all. Tricia from Hodgepodge shares some ideas for finding time to add in those homeschooling extras.
Always wanted to try unit studies but not sure where to start? Cindy has suggestions of How to Plan a Unit Study.
Are you constantly driving around in the car from one activity to another? Here are ways you can take advantage of the time in your car and schedule some of your homeschooling to be car schooling.
Need to get in a habit of having habits to keep you scheduled and on task in your homeschooling? Check out this wonderful list of links to help you get in the habit of habits.
Have you found that your schedule is just too busy? Are you and the kids almost in tears because you’ve over scheduled? It might be time to consider cutting the clutter from your schedule to free up time.
In the busy homeschooling household, it can sometimes be difficult to find as much time with your husband as you should. Kris offers up some amazing ideas in Scheduling Time with Your Husband.
It’s tempting to make a schedule that you think is right but doesn’t really flow for your needs. Instead, why not make a homeschool schedule that works for you?
Busy juggling a wide variety of ages? Tricia from Hodgepodge wrote up an amazing post about how to school with a variety of ages, including lots of links to other posts about scheduling.
Work your way to a more smoothly running school day with 10 tips from Roan. Really – who couldn’t use a school day that ran a little more smoothly, right?
If you’re absolutely opposed to a schedule and just can’t make them work for you no matter what you do, maybe you should try to work with rhythms and routines in your homeschool instead of schedules. That post was written by Michelle for The Homeschool Classroom with the “Chronically Random” in mind.
The Ultimate Guide to Homeschool Scheduling is part of iHomeschool Network’s Ultimate Guide list.
Angie, a domestically-challenged artist and writer, is a homeschooling mom to three children. She writes about everything that happens in their lives between all the loads of laundry at Many Little Blessings. She is also the founder of The Homeschool Classroom, Catholic Mothers Online, Tiny Owl Designs, and Just a Tiny Owl {Etsy shop}.
photo credits – stock.xchng, Many Little Blessings
Thank you for this….I added our youngest to our ‘school’ this year…and still trying to identify a good schedule for everyone. I can’t wait to dig through all of these resources for the sage advice provided. Thank you!
AWESOME ideas, Angie. I thank you for taking the time to compile them!
I actually included this whole post in my own ultimate guide, to balancing homeschooling as a working mom, because there is soooo much great stuff here :)
Great ideas to add to my school planner
Much needed links for me, particularly the “cutting the clutter” one. I appreciate the wisdom of more experienced homeschoolers to help me develop a working schedule for our family. Thank you!
Wonderful! Pinned it!
Thank you for the link to Toni’s high school credit planner. I soooo needed this.
Thank you for posting this. I know that I’m not the only one that struggles mightily with preparing homeschool schedules that actually work in the real world with a real family. I do enjoy seeing what works for others as it always sparks an idea or two for my own family as well!