Simple Homeschool Schedule for Working Moms
Looking for a realistic homeschool schedule for working moms? Consider this method for creating and managing a homeschool schedule with these tips and ideas.
I am a homeschool mom. I am also a working mom. Nope, that’s not an oxymoron. In fact, I work 40+ hours a week and homeschool all four of my kids as a single mom. Probably the most common question people ask me is how can a single mom afford to homeschool?
A fair question, to say the least, but the bigger question is how can you homeschool when you have a full-time job, right?
It’s definitely possible to work full-time and homeschool your kids, but your daily homeschool schedule is going to need some tweaks. Let’s dig into several practical homeschool schedules for working moms. I’ll include the actual schedule I used when my kids were all in elementary school, when they were in middle school, and even now as they are in their teen years.
Simple Homeschool Schedule for Working Moms
A year ago, I wrote about how much I hate the minute-by-minute schedule and how I use chunks of time and routines to create our daily homeschool schedule. In a sense, our schedule is still in chunks, although I haven’t always outlined it as such on the schedule. It still follows a similar regimen to the old one: morning chunk, lunch chunk, afternoon chunk, and evening chunk.
The difference really is in the detail that we follow in each chunk. Instead of a loose list of things to accomplish, I’ve assigned more structured time frames in the early years and then gone back to a more loose schedule as they’ve gotten older.
Morning Chunk
This is the part of the day BEFORE we start school. It begins with me getting up and starting my day off right with God’s Word and then utilizing a fresh mind to work on upcoming projects. When the kids get up, they start with the morning checklist to help them accomplish a morning devotion time, breakfast, and morning chores.
School Chunk
I’ve done the school chunk many different ways. But in this stage of life, it’s working best as a concentrated chunk in the morning. (Remember to do what is right for you! It doesn’t have to be done in the morning.)
I start the day off by teaching our worldview curriculum to everyone. The kids work in the accompanying notebooks as I read. Then I have a little time with Luke (Pre-K). We will do a few pages in his books and read together. Meanwhile, Nathan (2nd grade) is reading his story to himself. Once I am done with Luke, Nathan will read the story to me.
By this point, everyone is usually settled in with their school work. I work at the table with them, answering questions as they arise. During this time, I keep my work schedule light. I want the children to be able to interrupt me if they get stuck on something.
Do I teach them every single subject directly? No way! I’ve worked really hard to teach them to love to learn. I’ve taught them that they can learn anything by teaching themselves. I do help as needed, and some days that is a lot. But my older children (4th and 5th grade) do not need me to micromanage their lessons. Read more about “How to Choose the Best Homeschool Curriculum” and the methods I use.
Lunch Chunk
Next, we prepare lunch, and I read aloud something to everyone while they eat. We read missionary biographies like Hudson Taylor or history, science, worldview . . . pretty much anything. One of our all-time favorites was Prayers That Changed History.
Each child has a lunchtime chore (often associated with preparing or cleaning up from lunch). When my kids were in early elementary, I would also check their weekly checklists after eating lunch, grading the day’s work.
Afternoon Chunk
Typical afternoon activities:
- Naptime or quiet reading time
- Appointments
- Time to explore interests
- Outside time
- Free time
Afternoon is one of the biggest chunks of work time I get. When my kids were babies and toddlers, they slept. For many seasons, I had a sitter come in a few days a week or even every day to help keep the kids engaged (and safe) while I worked. I love a homeschooled teen for this. They usually want the work and often have lots of experience with siblings. Since I don’t actually leave, even a 12-year-old can work well.
Evening Chunk
The evening chunk is flexible and should be based on your family’s needs. Typical activities include:
- Preparing, eating, and cleaning up after dinner
- Family time (taking a walk, reading, playing games)
- Showers and bedtime routine
Sample Elementary Homeschool Schedule for Kindergarten–5th grade
Below is what our schedule looked like when all of my kids were in elementary school. At that time, my kids were in 5th grade, 4th grade, 2nd grade, and preschool.
Some things to consider with this schedule: Still having a preschooler means your involvement is much higher than it will be in later elementary, so be sure you consider the ages of your kids. Also, for a work-at-home mom, a sitter is your best friend.
I like to do my own teaching, but I’m fine with having someone come in the afternoon to keep my kids out of trouble.
Sample Middle School Homeschool Schedule
As your kids get older, you can’t do things the way you used to. (<— Not rocket science, right?) Sometimes we do forget this, though, and we keep trying to stuff big kids into a little kids’ schedule.
Below is our middle school homeschool schedule. At this point, my kids were in 8th grade, 7th grade, 5th grade, and 2nd grade. We chose to cram our school into 4 days a week and took every Friday off.
The schedule was different enough that I kept my middle schoolers and my elementary kids on a different grid. It was easier to follow. Below is the schedule my boys kept (2nd and 5th grade). I still had a sitter for the boys two days a week and a co-op that my kids attended while I stayed home and worked.
Just like the schedule above, I did work before the kids got up and every afternoon. Then I would often work a few hours in the morning.
I would also work a full day on Tuesday while the boys were in co-op (the girls were home, but they didn’t need much help in middle school).
If you are just getting started and want to learn more, you can read my post about how to homeschool.
Homeschool Planning Boot Camp
Are you needing a bit more inspiration and vision for your homeschool? I totally get it! I’m a working mom too, and often need my vision refreshed.
I’d like to invite you to my FREE Homeschool Planning Boot Camp. In just 5 days, you will be ready for your best homeschool year ever!
Click the image below for all the details. I hope to see you there!
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 love all the interesting ways different families homeschool. I am excited to see the visual schedule that you posted. I may have to copy the format and use it in my planner. 🙂
You’ve given me some really good things to think about, we’ve used a chunk schedule in the past but it really needs to be revamped. I especially love the idea of rotating dinner helpers!!
I just came across this page on pinterest and it was definitely a ‘God’ thing. =) I’ve been contemplating homeschooling since we had kids. My littles are 3 1/2 and 1 1/2. Your schedule looks so easy and doable! I’ve definitely been encouraged. I look forward to receiving your posts in my inbox.
Thanks for the example. I’m in the midst of trying to come up with a schedule while I work, and also try to fit in homeschooling, kids’ activities, and co-op class. It’s nice to see a concrete example! I like the rotating helpers with dinner idea.
So very helpful! I am VERY new to homeschooling and love to take a peek at what works for other families to see if an new idea might fit into our routine. Thank you for sharing!
Praying for your journey, Nicole! It’s so fun and so intimidating,too! You can do this with God’s help. Never doubt that! 🙂
I love this! I am sooo not organized (of course my little ones are 5, 3, and 1.5), I want to implement this schedule now as we head into summer so I can have it down by the time my daughter starts K in the Fall.
Side note: I just realized I’ve been pinning your posts for the last few years, now I’m reading your website I’ve finally put two and two together. Your website is a treasure trove! This last year especially is when my world came crashing down. Now I’ve had you “in my back pocket” for this time when I need your wisdom, experience and grace. Thanks! I appreciate you.
Thank you for your sweet words, Hannah. So glad to have you here!
It sounds like you have developed a very balanced schedule, but it looks like it only adds up to 2 hours a day of school time. Of course you know what is right for your family, but for others seeking guidance from your blog I worry that they will not realize that for most children this is not enough.
2 hours is more than enough school in a day! Public educated children don’t even get that. They spend most of the day sharpening pencils and standing in line for the bathroom.
However, My kids generally get about 3 hours of straight “table” school work, in addition to life skills and quite a bit of reading, writing and analyzing during quiet times and devotions. 🙂
This is HUGELY normalizing for me. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how to do the HOURS of schoolwork…I like seeing that we can do it like this. My kids are learning all day!
I saw this on Pinterest and am a planner addict!! After all, to effectively run a household AND homeschool there needs to be a planner in there somewhere right?! ANYWAY!!!….. I love your article and the arrangement of your schedule. It is funny how our home and school cycle through various seasons as our children grow. I like the chunking method you are using. We have used it as well with great success, but what I like most is how you planned out your afternoon/evening as far as free time, family time and even help with dinner. As we consider our plans for fall I think I will use some of your advice! Thank you!!
This is great! I use a lot of the same techniques, but we use the Love My Schedule system. It’s a magnetic wet erase schedule that I keep on the fridge. That way I don’t have to print out a new schedule when I want to change it. I also have the chore charts so I can check off their chores as they get done. Their website is LoveMySchedule.com if anyone wants to check it out 🙂
I have a sewing business in our home. This school year is my first year homeschooling. I have a kindergartener, a four year old and an almost 1 year old. So many homeschooling moms told me not to do much for kindergarten so I just purchased some workbooks at the beginning of the year and tried to do some five in a row cirriculum . It stressed me out to no end! I felt like I was spinning my wheels and accomplishing nothing.
In October I got abeka video school and it has worked really well!
However I am not sure if I want to continue for future grades for several reasons a. I feel like the video classroom time wastes a bit of my child’s time b. it is a lot of screen time (although I don’t make him watch every single video it is an hour and a half )
I am nervous about exploring my other options because I don’t want to spend a lot of time preparing for the school day. But what else is out there?
I have a 19-year old (homeschool graduate, college sophomore), 15 year-old going into 10th, and an almost 13 year-old going into 8th.
This is what my 15 years of homeschooling have taught me…there are a million ways to homeschool. Some years we were really structured…some years we did MATH and found stuff…I’ve been everything from Classic to complete unschooler.
Play with your kids. Be with your kids. Read to your kids. Make them work with you, garden, tidy, cook, count many things…and keep searching. It’s amazing the things that come up “just in time” as you keep pushing forward on this journey. There is no “absolutely right” way to do it…and you’ll figure out what is right for you many times before the whole thing is over.
My teenage son has that sleep phase delay most kids get at around puberty so mornings are not ever going to be school time for him anymore. I use mornings for my own work; mainly school for me (I am working on my master’s degree) and to run any errands I need done.
This is very close to ours and works well! My struggle at the moment is that my hubby works 9 to 9 and I’m trying to find a way to fit in daily work fr home a couple hrs, ur idea is a good one, might see if this would benefit me to pay a sitter later… but right now I’m just getting started so I need to do bulk of work by getting up super early, which has been challenging getting myself to rise at 4, w hubbys late work hrs….
Hey Kim great schedule, we follow a similar one. Glad to see great moms think alike.
Hi,
for some reason some of your checklists (morning and school) aren’t coming up with i click on them…says error 404. FYI 🙂 Thank you for them!
Kari
Thank you for letting me know. We had some issues with the links, but they are all fixed now.
I love this! Thankyou for being so honest, including things like having a sitter in the afternoon, and that you haven’t quite got the ‘work creep’ out of family time yet! This just seems like a really do-able homeschool plan! I love it!
My son is still struggling with the ‘if you just knuckle down and do the work it leaves more time for other activities’ idea, so our school time is 8.00-2.00, with one 30min break and one hour break. I am not sure how he would go with school from 8.00-12.30 (with no breaks – if I took the breaks out and finished early instead) In fact, you have inspired me to try that today, and see if he likes the whole afternoon ‘off’!
Can’t wait to hear how it goes!
I really like this schedule even though my sons do school through k12 online schools instead us actually homeschooling them. I do work outside of the house and I think that this schedule will help with my 4th grader so that my husband can help keep him on track while I am gone to work during the day. My 12th grader could use one also because he is asutic and needs reminders. 4th grader has cub scouts on wednesdays and 12th grader works monday to friday at 5 pm plus he helps with cooking.
For the autism, check out http://www.iahp.org for great materials and perhaps patterning. Got our daughter so much better. You can email me. Anyone here can. We did neat stuff (and a lot of hard work! And this was 45 years ago!
All great advice! Our family uses the Love My Schedule system. It’s a magnetic wet erase schedule that I keep on the fridge. That way I don’t have to print out a new schedule when I want to change it. I also have the chore charts so they can check off their chores/meals as they get done. Their website is LoveMySchedule.com if anyone wants to check it out.
Thank you! This is our first year homeschooling and this has been helpful as I start planning next year. I struggle with our schedule and your resources for homeschooling has been very beneficial.
Hello:) Would it be possible to break down what that 2 -3 hours of ‘table’ school time looks like for your older kids? We have a similar schedule, but have a playtime in the middle that can make the day longer that I would like at times:) Yet, the break from core classes does give me time to get some of my own work done:) Thank you fir your encouraging posts! I love it! 🙂
We don’t really take breaks, but my kids are older. We pretty much just run down the list of subjects and knock them out. I’m not picky about which subject is first and most often allow my kids to choose unless we are doing something together or they need me. Hope that helps!
Your ideas are so encouraging! I am not a naturally gifted organizer, but I like to homeschool my kids. It is very helpful to have these resources to help me manage our time. Thank you so much!
I have a 12yr old and a 14 yr old and our schedule is constantly changing. I work out side the home, but this chunk schedule looks very doable. We will try it out for home and make necessary changes where needed for us, but thanks it looks very doable for my middle and high school boys.