How to Create the BEST Homeschool Schedule for Your Family
Tried other homeschool schedules out there and nothing works? We’ve been there! You’ll love these tips from a 20+ year homeschool veteran.
Do you feel frustrated trying to create the best homeschool schedule? After 20 years of homeschooling, I can tell you that it’s NOT impossible to create the perfect homeschool schedule. But I can also tell you that it probably doesn’t look anything like what you might have imagined.
If we haven’t met, I’m Kim Sorgius. I have an M.A in Curriculum Development and planned to spend my career teaching in the public school system. Until one day while on maternity leave with my first child, I began homeschooling my 8-year-old nephew in an effort to save him from being retained the second time. My goal was to catch him up and send him back. The rest of the story is a really cool one—as I felI in love with homeschooling so much that I’ve spent the last 20 years doing anything it took to continue doing it with my own kids.
In those early homeschooling days, I very quickly learned that homeschooling was NOT THE SAME as the classroom. Baby diaper blowouts were unscheduled. Some concepts took longer to learn than expected, and most importantly, we found that the rabbit trails led to the kind of learning we couldn’t pass up.
So, I had to throw out the traditional homeschool schedule!
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE a good schedule. I just needed one that would work with our style of learning and flex around unexpected things like a visit from Grandma, a really cool comet that we just had to stay up late for, and yes, those diaper blowouts.
3 Ingredients for the Perfect Homeschool Schedule
1. It’s centered around family life, not institutional systems.
The biggest lesson I learned as a new homeschooler was that the classroom schedule did NOT work. But it’s so ingrained in our minds as the “way to learn” we can’t see past it. Trust me, you’re not alone in that. The best homeschool schedule throws all of that tradition out the window and instead seeks to find a system that works for your family, helping you accomplish your goals instead of boxing you in or binding you to an institutional ball and chain.
2. It must be flexible.
Lack of flexibility will lead to frustration EVERY TIME, and many of those times, we just give up. I know you’ve been there. The morning starts off perfectly until little Jessica wakes up with an ear infection. By the time you get home from the doctor and the pharmacy, it’s nearly time for lunch, and you figure the day is just shot. After all, you’ve missed all of the things that you wrote down for the morning, and there’s no way to turn back the clock.
But I also feel the rub of leaving things TOO loose. No schedule at all often leads to getting pretty much nothing done. I’ve settled on a core structure (I call these “chunks”) and a flexible routine within those chunks. The best part is if something interrupts your morning chunk, it can be pushed back until later or even swapped with the afternoon chunk. Once we started doing this, we no longer gave up on school just because something unexpected popped up.
In creating a schedule based on chunks, it’s easy to get back on track at any point in the day, even if we have an unexpected appointment. We just jump back in at the right chunk. Plus, without a bunch of set times to remember, it is much easier to keep up.
3. It should teach responsibility.
If you create a schedule that keeps Mom in the driver’s seat without allowing your kids the ability to take responsibility for keeping the routine, they won’t bother. We can’t become frustrated with our kids when they don’t take ownership if we are constantly micromanaging their moments. A great homeschool schedule sets boundaries of time that contain a flexible routine for kids to accomplish.
Sample Homeschool Schedule Using Chunks
The perfect homeschool schedule works for you, not the other way around. Stop working so hard to make the schedule work, and create a system that flows with life.
We do this by dividing the day into manageable chunks of time—typically morning, school, lunch, afternoon, and evening.
Each chunk of time has a pre-determined routine within that chunk. I typically set a time that I’d like for that chunk to start, knowing that it’s flexible and may vary from day to day.
Everything that happens within that chunk of time happens as a routine with the first things first, working down the list.
Here is a peek at what a typical homeschool day looks like for our family:
Morning Chunk (7:30 am)
- Bible reading/quiet time (We use this system for kids devotions.)
- tidy room
- breakfast
- morning chores (We use this chore system.)
- memory work
If you need ideas for a good morning routine that helps kids learn responsibility, check out this post. Remember, this chunk starts as soon as you get up. It doesn’t matter what time it is!
School Chunk (9:00 am)
- family meeting/devotion (more about how we do family Bible study here)
- complete your assignments by checking off your checklist
- turn it in to Mom (more about accountability in this post)
- free exploration (We limit this to educational activities and pursuits.)
Lunch Chunk (12:00 pm)
- help prepare food
- eat lunch
- listen to the read aloud (one of the BEST things we do each day!)
- lunch chore
Afternoon Chunk (2:00 pm)
- turn in your checklist (if you didn’t get to it in the morning)
- quiet time (especially if you have littles)
- extra-curricular activities/errands
- screen time
- outside time
Family Time Chunk (4:30 pm)
- family game (15-30 minutes)
- clean sweep the house
- help prepare dinner and set the table
- eat dinner
- help clean up the kitchen and do evening chores
- evening activities (bike ride, walk on the trail, church, etc)
Night Time Chunk (8:00-10:00 pm)
- bath and books (This is indpendent reading time. Check out this booklist for ideas.)
- special time with Mom
- prayers and lights out
The time for this chunk has greatly varied over the years from 7 pm all the way to about 10 pm with my high schoolers. Remember to take into consideration your family’s unique circumstances and ages when you determine a general time for this.
Also, if you are working from home and homeschooling, you’ll find this simple homeschool schedule for working moms super helpful. I’ve been working since my kids were very young, so I’ll share all of my best tips!
Sample Homeschool Schedules for All Grade Levels
If you’re looking for specific ideas for each grade level, you’ll find suggested homeschool schedules, curriculum, and teaching ideas for all ages below:
- Preschool Homeschool Curriculum
- Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum
- First Grade Homeschool Curriculum
- Second Grade Homeschool Curriculum
- Third Grade Homeschool Curriculum
- Fourth Grade Homeschool Curriculum
- Fifth Grade Homeschool Curriculum
- Sixth Grade Homeschool Curriculum
- Seventh Grade Homeschool Curriculum
- Eighth Grade Homeschool Curriculum
- High School Homeschool Curriculum
Get Help Planning Your Homeschool Schedule
If this feels a little overwhelming, I’d love for you to join our Homeschool Planning Boot Camp. It’s a totally FREE 5-day course that will walk you step-by-step through the process of planning your BEST homeschool year ever!
Through practical tools & Bible-based resources, Kim Sorgius is dedicated to helping your family GROW in faith so you can be Not Consumed by life’s struggles. Author of popular kid’s devotional Bible studies and practical homeschooling tools, Kim has a master’s degree in education and curriculum design coupled with over 2 decades of experience working with kids and teens. Above all, her most treasured job is mother and homeschool teacher of four amazing kiddos.
I was interested to see that you do WWE 3x per week. I am assuming that works well for you. Right now we do it Mon, Tues, Wed, and Friday – getting the 4 days out of the way w/in a week. I read your blog a lot because I’m thinking very strongly about joining our local CC group! Thanks for all the great info!
Well, as you can see, I would recommend CC. 🙂 It is a great fit for our family, but, of course, not for everyone!
WWE works well 3 days a week. I could care less about extending a story over the weekend. Getting WWE “completed” is not the priority in our homeschool and with 3 kids in school, there is only so much mommy time. I do love WWE, but it requires my full attention for 15 minutes with each kid. Add reading, math and other things and I am out of time! 🙂
If you consider CC, WWE is highly recommended before Essentials. The parents who have gone through that program sing it’s praises as the best preparation for the Essentials program.
thanks for the advice. Yes, WWE takes up a good chunk of our time and right now it’s one of our “non negotiables” each day – but if I had more than 2 children I’m not sure I could keep up. The work load in Level 4 is taking me sometimes 30 minutes or more with my daughter. I can REALLY see its benefits, though – wow, she is getting to be a great writer!
We are only in level 2 now. We have about 3 weeks left before we start level 3 and 2 (again with the younger daughter). Does level 4 still require as much parent involvement? Surely they should be moving them toward more independent learning by that point, right? (Spoken from a momma who is a big fan of independent learning.)
You only get 5 and a half hours of sleep!? I might collapse.
Hehe. Yeah, I do best with 6.5, hence the need to try and get in bed at 11. 🙂 It does happen a few nights a week. Right now I am working very hard to produce income. Once that is a little more stable, I should be able to step back a bit.
I also find that if I sleep more than 7, I feel groggy. Even when I need to catch up on sleep.
If you sleep more than seven you feel groggy?!!? Oh my goodness, I’m so jealous!! I’ve been staying up too late trying to get things done, and I’m a zombie! I’ve often coveted the gift of not needing tons of sleep. 😉 Anyway, thanks for a peek into your day and schedule. I’m amazed and inspired by your courage and strength as you lead and teach your children in spite of the hard times you have endured as a family. May God bless you and continue to equip you.
Thanks for your kind words!
Hi Kim, I saw this post a couple years ago and it has helped me frame my day and stay on task and ensure I have time with my kids while working from home – even though I don’t homeschool! (yet, anyway…) Thanks for sharing this method.
I chose to respond to this particular post because I realized this same thing!! I do best on 6 hours or so of sleep. Any less over extended periods of time and I get sick, any more and I feel tired and lazy all the time. Basically, I disagree with the “research” that says everyone needs 8 hours a night 😀 Glad I’m not the only one!!! I’m referring a few new homeschool mommies to your page because they also work from home. Thanks again for all your great content!
I like the “chunks,” Kim. That’s a good description of what we basically do too, although not quite as organized (it’s a work in progress). I’ve found that having a loose plan does help our days go smoother, and I am not so tempted to get distracted by upmteen other things could grab my attention to be done. I also pray I will be open to the Lord changing what I think are my “plans” any day of the week;)
Yes! I find that God changes my plans a lot. Like say today when we should have been doing school but had a situation that landed us running some not so fun errands. 🙂 Fortunately, our school chunk is shorter right now since CC hasn’t started and we are still on track today!
Your day is quite similar to ours. I love how you wrote it out in chunks of time. That is more like our schedule, even though I wrote it out with times. I’m glad to hear you guys are keeping up your routine. Praying for a blessed year for you!
Thanks Kim for sharing your “daily life” in this post. I was just praying today about better time management and having a better routine/schedule to our day. I like the “chunk” approach. I will incorporate that into my thinking about our day.
I love the way you did chucks of time, I called mine “blocks” of time. It seems much simpler written down that way. Sometimes when we write it all down it’s overwhelming. Love your site following now.
Kim,
When we were in the throes of homeschooling, I was so tempted to just jump out of bed (ok, crawl out of bed) and immediately start my day. Those were usually less than stellar days. Sheer desperation led me to prioritize my quiet time with the Lord and spend time at his feet first. As I did, I would submit “my” day and plan to him, asking him to change anything about it that was different from his good plan for us. By doing this, I found I handled “interruptions” less like inconveniences and more l like God’s divine intervention. God is so good to guide us when we surrender to his good and perfect plans. God bless you as you homeschool. Visiting from Be Not Weary today.
I’m glad you wrote on this subject. I have been finding it hard to stay on task and just decided to make sure that I stayed on track the best I could.
I tried to write out our schedule in times for my blog today, but “chunks” would more accurately reflect what we do as well 🙂 Blessings to you!
I really like how you chunk your days. As a former teacher, I’m trying to do a school schedule at home and we end up schooling until late at night without any breaks. Needless to say, I’m frustrated and so is my 3rd grade daughter. Rethinking today how to fit it all in during the week without doing so much during a day!
People say that it should be easier to homeschool if you were a classroom teacher, but it is far harder in my opinion. The biggest problem? We try and mimic the classroom! Honestly, you should be able to do third grade with one student in less than 2 hours. 🙂 Resist the urge!
Agreed!! It’s hard to get the formal school teacher mentality out of our heads. I struggle with that more than anything honestly because I don’t know how to just “go with it” because in school we weren’t allowed to. We almost need a detox system! haha
I’m a “chunker” too. ::laugh:: We have Morning Time (Wake-up until 9:00am), School Time (9:00am-1:00pm), Afternoon Time (1:00pm-3:00pm), Activity, Free and Dinner Time (3:00pm-8:00pm depending on the day), Bed Time (8:00pm-10:00pm). It just seems to flow better this way for us! No one gets stressed about specific times.
I have a first grader in public school so stuck out to me (because I wouldn’t do the rest) was the bible study and quiet time. Do you tell them what scripture to read? How do you decide what you should read yourself?
My kids are part of CBS which is a Bible study for both adults and kids. We all have homework daily from that. It takes my kids about 15-20 minutes and it takes me 20-30. For the kids, CBS is the bulk of what they do during that Bible study time. For me, my evening Bible study time is spent with the CBS material and the morning time varies greatly. I study passages or books that I think will help me with a particular problem or I study along with the Hello Mornings Challenge. Right now we are doing 1 Peter. The study encourages you to dig deeper in the word and teaches tips for doing so. I love the studies that are written by Katie and Lara, two moms who love God fully and are real life friends. Here is a link to that study…http://www.amazon.com/Kept-Secure-Whatever-Quench-ebook/dp/B008V264C2
Thanks for taking the time to write all of this out! I homeschool my 2 oldest and have a 16 month that provides plenty of entertainment all the while…! We’ve been trying to find our “groove” and I like the idea of breaking the day into chunks – it makes logical sense and doesn’t seem as stressful as scheduling to 15 min increments! I NEED organization, but never seem to have it! thanks for a great post – love your blog!
Routine girl checking in here. I can’t do a schedule it makes me crazy.
I love all the “chunks!” Even though it’s a little funny seeing it written so many times =) I’m one who needs a schedule. I often write it down to the minute, but am completely ok with it not going that way =) I just need to know what’s coming up like you said. Thanks for linking this up with us at Trivium Tuesdays!
Hi
Im in south africa and im married to a rev. I have four wonderful childern who i homeschool . I really love your site and to tell you the truth it is hard to homeschool even if you are married. I love it and am blessed.
Love how you refer to the sections of the day as ‘chunks’. My word is ‘globs’
It took me several years, and a second baby, to get to the place where I could happily “chunk” 🙂 I was a minute by minute planner and then would get super stressed out when life didn’t work out right, because let’s face it, it never does. My older son got he planning gene and when I tried posting an hour schedule he nearly made me crazy telling me when we were off schedule, or needed to change activities. I work outside of the house from about 10:30 – 3:00 so chunking works so much better for us. We have morning (before work), at work (the boys are allowed screen time and free play as I work for a family business and have the freedom to use the onsite home), after work (generally snack and quiet time), our evenings fluctuate depending on gym schedules (my husband and older son do Tae Know Do while I work out) and whether or not dad goes to work. Even though our schedule fluctuates from day to day chunking makes it easier to slip back into our “routine” regardless of the day.
I just want to say thank you for sharing this. I love the idea of “chunking”. It’s less intimidating and leaves some wiggle room for unexpected things while still remaining focused on what needs to get done. This is perfect for a homeschooler like me who can be a slave to a set schedule and get upset and feel like a total failure if not everything is checked.
this is my first year homeschooling. I am a retired special education teacher raising my 5 grandchildren. The older two (11,8) are in public school and the younger two ( 4 yr old twin boys) go to PreK each morning from 9-11:30. I am homeschooling the 6 yr old, who has high functioning autism after a rough k yr in a public school special class placement. We do a lot of homeschooling in the car during our drop off / pick up of the twins. We also do a marathon 1-1 time for reading, writing and math from 9:15-11:15 MWThF. Tuesday’s he goes to a local homeschool coop with support from his community habilitation worker and Fridays we do a community outing after twins pick up. The schedule has been crazy and I am now finally figuring out how to take care of the household chores, homeschool and have quality time with the other 4 kids. I am always struggling to get everything covered and meet the required hours. Any ideas or suggests is welcome. Thanks
What are you trying to cover? Are you using a curriculum of some kind?
Hi Kim!
Do you use a certain program to do the outlines for you scheduling?
Reading your posts this year has been such a huge help!!
-Jenalee
I use Google Sheets, which is just their version of a spreadsheet. Fairly simple! 🙂
Kim, thank you for the inspiration and your heart for instilling confidence in home-schooling moms. While I am not divorced, my husband works outside of the country and is only home on very rare occasion – so I do this by myself. It is because of you that I found Classical Conversations and have now found a wonderful community of fellow home-schoolers and believers. I just want you to know that your blogs and posts are valuable!
Betty H., RN
Oh this makes me so happy to hear. I’m so glad that you found support!
Thank you so much for posting this! I am desperately trying to get my life more organized right now. Our lives got CRAZY 9+ months ago when we decided to move to a new, much bigger property/house. The space is great, and we really needed it for everything we do, but it needs work, we homeschool our kids, and baby number 5 is just one month old. In order to allow our kids to work on certain tasks alone for homeschooling projects, we need to get certain spaces in our house and garage set up and organized, but somehow I need to find the time to get everything done AND get organized. I know my one big problem right now is not having a schedule or specific routine, and I think that a schedule like this is exactly what I need to keep the days rolling smoothly. Here’s praying that once I get something rolling, I can stick with it!
You can! Just give it to the Lord each day!
We struggle with our morning time. I can not get my kids to do what they got to before coming downstairs. Maybe it’s just a matter of me being patient? But how long does it take?!??!? Basically, my dream schedule would look like this…
6AM, Mommy time
730AM, kids usually wake up on their own at this time, hang in rooms until 8 when Mommy calls them down
8AM Mommy calls them down, but this is when they are suppose to quickly make beds, open curtains, tidy rooms, get dressed, brush teeth
8-9AM breakfast and Keys For Kids devotion during breakfast
9AM start school
My problem is when I call them at 8AM to do their morning list and come down to start the day. They either fool around, forget to do something, and it winds up turning into chaos. There are a few times where they are on top of their game, but 95% of the time, I’m screaming and yelling up the stairs, or going to check their rooms and I gotta call them up for something because they forgot. We don’t start school on time…it’s just a chain reaction into the rest of the morning. I’m frustrated! I know they are capable. They are 9, 6, and 4…FYI, I even have a list on their walls to follow as they go!
If you have any advice, or witty ideas, I’ll take it!! Thanks!!