A Resource for Scheduling Your Homeschool

This weekend, I realized I almost donated a very valuable resource. 

My sweet friend Deanna suggested this book over coffee one day, and I went home and bought it off Amazon with high hopes it would be a positive influence on my somewhat chaotic homeschool schedule.  Sadly, as soon as it arrived, I set it aside, only to forget about it completely and nonchalantly add it to my “books-to-donate” pile. 

But luck would have it…

I’m one of those people who packs their trunk full of donation items, only for weeks to pass by before getting to a drop off location.  So, while on a family vacation at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, I happened to pop open my trunk to look around while the kids played frisbee. Low and behold I come across

It was an “oh yeah, I forgot I had this!” moment, and as I started flipping through the pages, I landed on the section titled Scheduling School. Those 3 short pages rocked my homeschool world! For both elementary and high school, the Maxwell’s get straight to the point about what works and what’s reasonable in a daily schedule.

With ample schedule ideas, insight on how long school should take each age group, and loads of advice based on their own personal experience homeschooling 8 kids, I found enough inspiration to keep me busy for days! 

Over the next 2 days during down time, I worked our schedule from jumbled thoughts and estimated time frames, into well-planned school days, with lots of time in between!  With a few notebook and one pencil to spare in our motorhome, here’s how I started organizing our schedule:

Rough outline of what I wanted our homeschool morning to look like…

and I mean, rough! Scribbles, really. But this is a very general idea of how I want our mornings to look.

Next, I made lists of each child’s lessons and how long I generally think we should be spending on them.

I posted pictures of my 8th and 6th graders ideal schedules. Some subjects we do Monday/Tuesday, and some we do Wednesday/Thursday. So, you’ll notice 2 subjects per line on some:

Putting it all together in an Excel sheet made for less pencil sharpening and running out of erasers 😊 Here’s our general schedule for my 1st, 3rd, 6th and 8th graders:

My favorite take-away from this book is Tutoring time with Mom! I’ve always tried to get solid one-on-one time with the kids each day for school, but I never actually scheduled it into our day. By putting it into a time frame, we all look forward to that time and the kids are quite protective of it 🙂

I started with Tutor Time with Mom, making sure I had adequate time built in for one-on-one tutoring with each kiddo, and at the proper times.  My youngest ones need me first thing in the morning, my older two can get most things done independently and then we meet later in the morning.

I’m telling you, of all the years we’ve been homeschooling, I never tried to time-block our subjects because I always felt it as too constraining, and I was afraid of living by the clock and loosing freedom in our schedule. 

HOWEVER, the reason why I love this so much more is because:

• 1) I was getting stretched thin by being pulled in 4 different directions at the same time for 4 straight hours.  It was too much.  I was frustrated, they were frustrated all morning and my patience ran thin really fast.  It was draining me.  So, being intentional to schedule one-on-one time allows all of us to look forward to when questions can get answered and mom can help with the harder stuff. 

• 2) My type A is satisfied because we actually get more accomplished.  So much time was getting wasted because my lack of structure allowed the kids to goof off more when I was occupied with another sibling.  Before we knew it, what should have taken 30 minutes for math was taking nearly an hour or more. 

I love the flexibility of our homeschool life, but it really comes down to the fact that children thrive with structure and accountability.  So, when I now set a timer for math for 30 min, whether they are done or not, it’s time to move on to the next subject and return to where we were tomorrow.  More can get done when we are on schedule, and we can always revisit issues in the afternoon when we have a good 3 hours of free time each day. 

Steven and Teri Maxwell are the authors of Managers of Their Homes, and are homeschool parents of 8. They share their invaluable experience of how to make your home life structured enough so that you feel as though your days are fulfilled and enjoyable! This is a wonderful resource that I highly recommend!

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links.  I am also an Amazon Affiliate.  If you purchase through my link, you won’t pay a penny more, however I will receive a small percentage back.  Thank you for helping support my blog in this way!  That said, I do NOT recommend anything that we do not use and love!

Share with us about your homeschool schedule in the comments before you leave! 

~Nikki