There’s a million ways to do the right thing, and that includes planning your homeschool day. So, here’s our best tips in helping you to plan and organize a day of homeschool that will best benefit you and your family:
Time Block Your Day
Time blocking is a way of chunking your day into blocks of time where you know certain activities get done at that time, and when the time is up, you move on to your next activity. There’s many ways to block your time, but before you can, you’ll need to know this: Are you a morning family? Or do you perform best at night? We suggest mornings be a time of get up and get going… but you’re morning time may be different than mine. Once you know the time you’d like to start your day, you can begin to time block your day. Here’s two different examples of how to time block your day. The first one example keeps the block of time in three hour segments, allowing you to keep a list of activities or projects that need to get done during that block of time. The second one, shows a bit stricter schedule on the time blocks. Either way, time blocking helps you and your children stick to your homeschool routines and schedules.
Example One:
- 6:00 – 9:00 am: Morning routines
- 9:00 – 12:00 pm: Schooling
- 12:00 – 3:00 pm: Lunch, activities, errands
- 3:00 – 6:00 pm: Free time, family time, dinner
- 6:00 – 9:00 pm: Nightly routines
Example Two:
- 6:00 – 7:00 am: Morning exercise
- 7:00 – 9:00 am: Get ready, chores, breakfast
- 9:00 – 10:00 am: Family schooling
- 10:00 – 12:00 pm: Individual schooling
- 12:00 – 1:00 pm: Break and lunch
- 1:00 – 2:00 pm: Music studies
- 2:00 – 3:00 pm: Personal reading
- 3:00 – 5:00 pm: Free time or activities outside of home
- 5:00 – 7:00 pm: Dinner and family time
- 7:00 – 9:00 pm: Bedtime routines
Start Your Day and End Your Day on a Good Note
One of the best ways to do this is by starting your homeschool day together as a family. You can do this through a morning devotional, prayer or scripture study. You can begin your day with a read-aloud, or a history lesson. You can have all of your children come together for creative writing, giving them a writing-prompt and allowing them 15-20 minutes of personal writing in their journal. There are so many ways to do this. We highly recommend starting off all together. This gives structure to your homeschool day and helps your kids stay on task. Pam Barnill, from Morning Basket has more great ideas on how to begin your day all together.
We also recommend doing something to end your homeschool day on a good note. This can be done by ending on a subject your children enjoy, ending on a captivating read-aloud book, or even ending with a few questions asking each child to share something they learned that day. This will bring the homeschool day to a close and give your children something to look forward to before being finished.
Make Learning Fun
Learning doesn’t have to be filled with memorization and drill worksheets. While those things do have a place, you can still make learning fun by adding in elements that your children aren’t expecting. For example, if you have a child learning fractions, have them make cookies by doubling or tripling the recipe. If your child is learning all about money, give them $5 and take them to a store, where they can learn to find something they can afford and learn to pay the cashier and get their change back. Children love to test their parents. Let your child come up with mathematical equations and the answers to them to test you. Or let them write a paragraph with 7 grammar mistakes and have you edit it.
Your Homework:
What’s a homeschool blog without a little homework?
- Time block each day of the week
- Pick one way to start and end your homeschool day together
- How can you add one element of fun in each week?
- Don’t stress: Try something for a couple weeks, and if it’s not working, change it.
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