Choosing a Homeschool Schedule

At this point, you know your state or country laws, you know your child's learning style as well as the best teaching style for them, and have chosen your curriculum. Now it's time to break it all down into a schedule that works for your family. Let's start by taking a look at the three main "calendar schedules", and then I'm also going to break down how you put your choice of curriculum into each schedule. Throughout this page, you'll find free resources to help you create and follow the best system for YOU. Don't worry, if you choose a system and end up not liking it, you can always change; that's one of the many beauties of homeschooling. 

The 9 month schedule resembles a traditional school schedule and usually runs from September-May. This schedule is particularly helpful for parents with a blended family (traditional school and homeschool under the same roof. By the way, if that's your situation, watch this video on how to navigate homeschooling with a blended family. 

Year round literally means you school year round. There's typically not a start or stop time and sometimes children are in two grades at once. For example, my daughter is currently in 2nd grade for a few subjects and in 3rd grade for the rest. We take breaks when we want, but typically not more than a couple days at a time minus maybe holidays. The pros for this type of schedule is it's incredibly flexible, meeting state minimums is a breeze and there's no wasted review time after a long summer break, so we get to cover more fun subjects in a year than traditional 9 month schedules allow. 

Personally, we typically schedule 4 days on and 3 days off.  If we have an off day or a busier than normal schedule one week, we simply use day #5 (and sometimes days 6 and/or 7) to make up a subject or two or to finish a fun, hands on project (that let's face it, doesn't even feel like school). More on making your homeschool FUN here. 

A Sabbath schedule is one where you school for 5 days a week for 6 weeks, then you take an entire week off, and you repeat that schedule for the entire year. I also know families that follow a similar schedule where they school for 4 weeks and take 2 off, 5 weeks and take 2 off, 3 weeks and take 1 off, you get the picture. You're just following a year round schedule with many, mini breaks instead of following a 9 month schedule with one 3 month giant break. If you're a mom that gets overwhelmed easily, (easier than normal haha because 'momming' is overwhelming in general) this would be a good option for you. It allows you to take a moment to refocus and recenter your homeschool every few weeks before jumping back into a full blown schedule. As I'm typing this I'm actually wondering why we don't do this haha, sounds pretty good to me! 

As I mentioned, we personally do year round schooling, and here are a couple reasons why: 

-Very flexible -We love to travel and spend time with friends.  

-Mental health days -As someone with severe PCOS, this was HUGE for me. Anytime I need a day off to give my body rest, I can without fear of not hitting the required amount of days. 

-Encourages love of learning -Doing year round school gives us more time to explore and do hands on projects as well as take fun field trips when there are no crowds. If a project stretches out a week longer than expected or my husband's job calls and says "hey, we need y'all to go to South Dakota for a couple of weeks" with a 48 hour notice, we don’t sweat it! We live our life as it comes and then we jump right back into where we left off on our book work. Its awesome! 

-No wasted time reviewing -As a former teacher, this is one I LOVE! I could think of so many things I'd rather spend 4-8 weeks on than reviewing what we learned 3 months ago. 

On the "year at a glance" homeschool schedule, you simply mark the days you WILL not be doing school. The second page of year at a glance is a space divided into months that you can write in any special dates or field trips you'd like to celebrate that month.

Now that we've covered the different calendar schedules, let's take a look at the Curriculum Schedules. 

Setting up a weekly rhythm allows you to set aside certain days for certain subjects, certain days for errands, certain days for field trips, library visits, arts and crafts etc. So a sample weekly rhythm schedule may look like this

Day of the Week                                     AM                                                              PM

Mon                                   Bible,Reading, Math, Spelling      Writing, Science, History, Music

Tues                                  Bible,Reading, Math, Spelling      Writing, Science, History, Music

Wed                                  Bible,Reading, Math, Spelling      Arts and Crafts, Bible Club

Thursday                        Bible,Reading, Math, Spelling     Groceries/Errands 

Friday                              Field Trip/Library Time                    Writing, Science, History, Music

A daily rhythm is basically keeping school hours. So you could say mon-fri we school from 8-1 or 9-3 or 10-2 or whatever your schedule looks like, then you'd have chores, work, errands, etc penciled in during other parts of the day. This is what our daily rhythm looks like majority of the week. 

3am mom works (Glori sleeps)

5am mom Works out (Glori sleeps)

630am Responsibilities (chores)

730am Breakfast

830am Devotions/Journaling by the pool

930am School by the pool

1130am Park Break and snack time

1230pm Lunch

1pm School

2pm School

4pm Free Play/Pool Time/Arts and Crafts/Snack time (Mom Works)

630pm Dinner

7pm Showers/Pjs

730pm Bed time stories

8pm Bed time

It's very important to note that the daily rhythm doesn't always go as planned either. Today for example, our park time got extended to 90 min because Glori met a friend there and wanted to play longer. After the park, she wanted to go run an errand with dad that turned into almost 2 hours, so we just pushed school off, and now she's lounging by the pool alternating between doing 3 independent subjects and a 30 min break. We'll get most of our things done, but not in the exact time frame and that's ok. People and relationships are always prioritized over our schedule, but having that daily rhythm allows us to live a life of time freedom where WE decide when and where we learn. 

A loop homeschool schedule is where you simply work from a list. Usually two lists actually... morning and afternoon. Your morning list is usually your core subjects where afternoon lists are made up of the extra curriculars/fun subjects. Your list could look like this: 

Morning                                                                             Afternoon

Bible,Reading, Math, Spelling                                 Writing, Science, History, Music

So let's say your morning school is from 9-11 and afternoon school is 1-3. 

Monday morning you get a great start to the week, and the kids are cooperative and everyone does all 4 subjects without fuss, awesome! After lunch the house goes to chaos and you only get your writing assignment done from your afternoon list. Simply put, when Tuesday afternoon comes around instead of starting with writing you'll start with science. You just keep track of where you left off each day and pick it up at that point the next day. Some days you get all 4 (or however many are on your list) subjects done, some days you get one or two subjects from the list done. Loop scheduling gives you freedom to not feel like you have to play "catch up" when you have off days. 

Now comes the fun part which is plugging the curriculum you chose into the schedule you chose. 

What you need to figure out is how many pages of each subject you need to do per week in order to get done by the end of the year. It's pretty simple to plug it all in from there. 

Subject        Total Pages or Lessons   divided by   number of school weeks = pages or lessons per week

Science        252 pages                                                      37(9 mo scheduled)              7 pages

Science        252 pages                                                      50 (yr round)                            5 pages

English         35 lessons                                                     37                                                  1 lesson

English         35 lessons                                                     50                                                  1 lesson (I'd then 

                                                                                                                                                          supplement with fun

                                                                                                                                                          review pages as needed

What I personally love to do is sit down for an hour or so on a Saturday at the beginning of a new school grade, grab my favorite hot beverage and turn on some music,  and plug all my curriculum into the formula above. Then each Sunday night I repeat the same process (warm beverage and music) and easily plan out our week because there's no guesswork as to how much needs scheduled because I have my handy dandy chart from above. 

Some people schedule out their curriculum a year in advance. I did this one time and about 3 weeks I was making changes and eventually ended up scrapping that yearly plan all together, so in the end weekly planning works best for us. 

Above is an example of what my weekly curriculum schedule looks like. I do use the $5 BossMom Homeschool Planner because I get bored easily, and this keeps me on track with a fun new theme every month delivered to my inbox, so I actually look forward to my planning sessions. 

On the bottom you can see that I color code Glori's independent, muddy, and hands on work. This allows me to easily schedule out our day according to what school work is planned. If you're not sure how to foster independent learning, you can watch this video which explains each phase. 

If you're reading this as part of the Homeschool 101 series, congrats! You're finished and on your way to a joy filled homeschool journey. If you're new here or just now thinking of homeschooling, welcome. We're so excited for you and you’re welcome to reach out and ask any questions you have or anything you need clarified. I’m always here to help. 

Until next time, this is Tonya reporting to you live from the homeschool trenches... I'm right there with you.