Tips for Creating a Homeschool Daily Schedule from a Full Time, Working Mom
I am a brand new homeschool mom—year one, clean slate, forging a new journey ahead. We switched from a Christian private school to homeschooling for many reasons. Chief among them was our desire to take back our schedule instead of being at the mercy of someone else’s timetable. (And don’t even get me started on how much I dreaded the daily drop-off and pick-up line.)
I am also a full-time, working-from-home mom, so I knew this jump into homeschooling would require strategy and planning. After all, there are only so many hours in a day, and my goal was to create rhythm and peace in our home, not chaos. I also knew that I couldn’t homeschool alone. My husband also works from home, so he and I decided to teach as a team. He teaches Bible, history, and science; I teach math, reading, grammar, spelling, and handwriting.
This division of teaching sounded like a great idea, but I needed a more solid plan to visualize how it would all work. Due to my nerdish tendencies, I fired up Microsoft Excel and began creating spreadsheets.
Daily Rhythms
I started by creating a time-blocked schedule for each family member. I’m a fan of time-blocking, which allows you to focus on a particular thing for a specific block of time. While every day certainly doesn’t look exactly like this, it helps me to have a visual.
Weekly Rhythms
Next, I looked at our weekly rhythm. What nights do we have activities, church events, etc.? These weekly rhythms are helpful to visualize so you can see areas where you have the margin to catch up, move things around, and make time for fellowship and discipleship opportunities. We also decided on a 4-day school week with Fridays as an optional day for catch-up, field trips, or time spent with family or friends.
A School Year Week by Week
Finally, I created a school year spreadsheet that plotted what we would accomplish in our curriculum weekly. Some curricula, like Apologia and IEW, include a very easy-to-follow weekly schedule. For our 4-day school week, we do math, language arts, Bible, and reading daily. We do science two days per week and history three days per week.
Learning Both Together and Separately
My two sons are 2 ½ years apart, so we combine several subjects and learn together. This saves time and allows the boys to work together through Bible, history, science, hymn study, art, Scripture memory, and read-alouds. Other subjects, such as math and language arts, work better when taught separately at differing age-appropriate levels.
Adaptability and Flexibility
One piece of advice I’ve received from many homeschool mom friends is to hold your schedule loosely and allow for flexibility. As a type A, high-achieving personality, I have to work at this.
Here are a few words I find encouraging from Durenda Wilson’s book, The Unhurried Homeschooler.
“If you are planning to homeschool indefinitely, one of the first things you need to understand is that homeschooling is not a sprint but a marathon. You need to pace yourself because if homeschooling becomes too stressful for too long, chances are you won’t make it through to the end—or you and your kids will hate it most of the time, which could damage your relationship with one another.”
Keeping my end goals in mind is a great reminder when I am tempted to be disappointed with a school day that went differently than planned.
Creating Systems for Shared Spaces
Having a home as a shared space for work, school, and life can quickly become overwhelming without systems in place.
We have a dedicated office (with closing doors 🙌🏻) for my husband and me to work. When the door is closed, the kids know we are on a work call and are not to be disturbed. When the door is open, they are welcome to come in and ask questions.
We do not have a dedicated homeschool room or space, so we gather around our kitchen table for school. Our rolling supply cart has been great for organizing all our markers, pencils, math manipulatives, flashcards, scissors, glue, tape, and more. When we finish school each day, the boys are responsible for putting all their books away in the cabinet and placing all their supplies back in the rolling cart.
Our family also works together on weekly chores and tasks to clean and maintain our home. Mondays are our “reset” day. A clean and tidy space has always helped me focus better, so it has become part of our weekly rhythm to have a clean start to the week.
Our God created order and beauty in nature, and I believe our homes should echo His design. I have found so much joy in creating systems and organization in our home that bring order, rhythm, and peace.
Time Around the Table
Meals are an important part of everyday life in our home. Both my grandma and my mom were/are wonderful cooks, and they passed their love of good food and mealtimes to me. I try to keep things pretty simple during the week when we’re all busy with work, school, and activities.
We often eat eggs, fruit, and homemade sourdough in the mornings. For lunch, I typically heat up leftovers or put fruit, veggies, cheese, nuts, and crackers on a cutting board that the boys can graze on throughout the afternoon. At dinnertime, I make simple meals that I can typically pull together in about 30 minutes. I also get my kids involved by having them help make eggs, wash and cut ingredients, set the table, and help clean up after meals.
The Most Important Thing
Above all the planning, spreadsheets, systems, curriculum, and organization sits the most important thing—that I teach my children to love the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their strength and with all their mind and to love their neighbor as themselves.
Remain on the narrow path during your homeschool journey with your eyes focused on God above, and you will experience the joy of His presence as you gather around the school table each day.
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13-14
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