Our Daily Homeschool Routine/How to Schedule it All in 2021

If you take a look at our curriculum choices for the year, it may seem impossible to get it all done. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when there are several children and many subjects to be taught. That’s why I like to sit down before the school year begins to plan our daily homeschool routine.

Before you look at our routine, I want you to know that this is the IDEAL. This is not the reality of each and every day, but it is the GOAL.

Whether you call it a homeschool routine or schedule doesn’t really matter as long as you have a plan. We’ll tweak our plan throughout the year and sometimes we’ll be in a season of adjusting it day-by-day. Such is life. I don’t sweat it too much as long as we’re making forward progress.

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Make a List

The first thing I do to develop our homeschool routine is to make a list. I list each child, their grade, and the subjects or curriculum that needs to be covered.

Bible, Math, Latin, History, Science, etc. I list the homeschool curriculum that each child is using, and for those that are fairly close in age, I can often find some overlap. When I see overlap, I know I can group those children with the same subject at the same time.

Do you see the overlaps? The two oldest have the same history and science. They’ll both take Spanish and Personal Finance. That will help me to schedule those classes at the same time for these two.

Take a look at the 7th grader and the 10th grader. They’re both doing a little remediation with All About Spelling. Even though they may end up on different levels, they’ll start out on the same one so we’ll do this subject together. The 7th grader is also joining in the same History, Spanish, and Personal Finance.

And finally, look at the kinders and the 2nd grader. They’ll be working on different levels in most subjects, but they’ll all three do Five in a Row lessons together.

Print an Hourly Planner Page

I print a planner page that has our school day broken down by the half hour. Again, this is not a perfect schedule. There are no bells ringing to remind us to move to the next subject, and there is no punishment for spending extra time on a subject.

Flexibility is the beauty of homeschooling.

By the time my kids are in 5th grade or so, I hope they’ll be at least somewhat independent in their school work. So my priority for scheduling is to make sure the younger kids get their one-on-one instruction in reading and math.

I schedule the big kids to help when possible. Otherwise, I schedule them to work independently on their separate subjects or together in a group on their common subjects.

A few things to notice here.

1. The day is broken down into half hour blocks except our morning meeting which I fully expect to take at least 45 minutes. Will we need more time or less time for some subjects and activities? Yes. Again, that’s the beauty of homeschooling. We’ll tweak the schedule as we go. We consider this our guide to help keep us on track, not our task master.
2. The first things I plug into our day are meal times. They’re pretty constant and easy to figure out. Snack time for the littles is the same. Big kids can snack while they work. (Again, we can do that because we homeschool!)
3. The first “subject” of the day is always Morning Meeting. I consider this the most important because it covers our Bible study, catechism, and prayer time as well as several other shared subjects.
4. Kids that could do the same subjects at the same time and possibly help each other out were grouped together. When I need to teach directly, I grouped as many subjects and kids together as possible.
5. I have an extra adult helping out with the preschoolers, so no worries about their play being supervised. 😉
6. My senior will continue dyslexia therapy and math with a private tutor.

Apply the Homeschool Routine as Written

The only way to know if your schedule will work is to try it. It looks great on paper, but where people are involved, things don’t always go smoothly. The first couple of weeks of school, we’ll be paying close attention to the written schedule and making adjustments as needed to make it work better for our family.

How about you? Does your family follow a homeschool routine or schedule throughout the school year? Share with me in the comments below.

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