One of the best things about homeschooling is not having to conform to a public school schedule. You don’t have to have the kids up at a specific time or make sure someone is home to get them off the bus or to pick them up. You also do not need to follow a typical school year calendar if you don’t want to. Having flexibility with scheduling is a massive benefit for homeschooling and part of its allure. However, you still want to consider having a homeschool routine to keep your children on track and learning.
The year goes so quickly, and the last thing you want to do is play catch up as the year winds down. Here are some homeschool routine ideas to help you stay on track and make your school year easier.
Homeschool Routine Ideas
When first starting homeschooling, creating a daily schedule or routine that works for you and your children can be challenging. But by following their lead, homeschooling and getting them to complete their work will be easy! These four ideas will help you develop a schedule that is both effective and flexible and will make starting each school day easier.
1 – Daily homeschool routine
Implementing a homeschool daily routine will keep your day structured. One of the wonderful attributes of homeschooling is its freedom of flexibility. So depending on how ridgid you need the routine to be or not be, is up to you.
It can be as simple as language arts and math in the morning with social studies and writing after lunch. Or, you can make it a bit more rigid for additional structure if necessary. You determine the flow that works best.
2 – Block scheduling
By scheduling in blocks, you have more freedom to teach subjects in different orders depending on the day of the week or how your children are feeling. Creating a micro schedule inside those larger chunks of time will keep you on track for what you are doing during the day.
Keep the mottos “simple homeschooling routine” and “simple homeschool planning.” These will help you in the long run and keep homeschooling sustainable and simple.
It may be best to start work with the little ones in your home first within this block scheduling. These kiddos may be the ones whose attention you lose first and often and need fewer hours of homeschooling within their day.
3 – Homeschool morning routine
A critical part of your daily homeschool routine is the morning routine. Setting up a good morning routine will get your children in the right mood to learn. Your morning routine may start earlier or later, depending on the habits of your family and may be as simple as sitting down to eat breakfast before getting started with your day.
If you have children at all different age levels, you can use a morning basket with activities your children can complete while waiting to start their homeschooling as some may have a different “morning time” than others.
This basket may include STEM bins, little puzzles, review worksheets, or morning work. By including a morning work worksheet or packet you can help your child review concepts you already taught or get them geared up to learn new topics! It’s a great way to get your students quickly into the homeschool mindset for the day.
4 – Free time
You want to incorporate free time into your schedule no matter your children’s ages. Even public high schools are starting to include “recess” in their students’ schedules because studies have proven students do better when given some time to relax and unwind between classes.
You can make the free time more structured with available activities, or just let your children “veg out” for a little and just have some time to flop on the couch. They can read a book or color a picture. Even homeschooling can be rough sometimes and as homeschooling families, we want to keep our children learning and happy throughout the day.
Typical homeschool day
If you google the phrase above, you will see many, many ways to start and implement a homeschool routine. Whether you start first thing in the morning or wait until your children have had some time to themselves each morning, keeping it simple and following your family’s lead when creating the schedule will help you start school on time, finish when you want and do so easily without struggles!
You can grab my FREE homeschool planner to help get you started or more organized HERE!
If you are looking for even more homeschool resources to help you get started with a homeschool routine. Check out the links below:
Ultimate Homeschool Resource Guide
These blogs may also be helpful to you:
7 Tips For Creating an Achievable Homeschool Schedule
Organize Your Homeschool Classroom
8 Homeschool Tips To Stay on Schedule
Morning Work and Why You Need It
