If your homeschool schedule looks different to most...

[abba12]

A friend of mine is curious about how different people manage their homeschools to fit best around their lives, outside the norm, so I told her I would ask here for some examples. Essentially she is interested in people who do not have a standard Monday-Friday, 9-3, daily schedule.

 

A couple of examples I was able to give her were

 

- My family had a 'weekly goals' checklist. We did not break it down into days, we had the aims for the week and that was it. So I could (and often did) choose to have a history day, and finish a weeks worth of history that day, then the next day might be math day (this doesn't work for everyone, but for me, focusing on a single subject for 3-4 hours was much better than doing 45 min of 5 subjects). It also meant we could self-pace, if we finished all our work in 4 days we got a 4 day week, and that was the aim most weeks since Wednesday was shopping day. If we wanted to do something on a weekday we would just make it up on Saturday, or in the evening, etc. (we were very independent, the ones who still needed mums help had a more rigid schedule)

 

- I knew of a family who's husband/father worked a 4 weeks on, 2 weeks off schedule in the mines, so they planned their homeschool around this, doing fast paced work during the 4 weeks, including weekends, so when daddy came home, they would be free to spend time with him.

 

- I knew of another family who's father worked night shift, so they adjusted their day to complement his sleep patterns (obviously they needed to be up during the day for many activities, but they slept most of the morning and stayed up late), and could usually be found doing schoolwork at 10pm!

 

So how do you make homeschooling work for you, what do you do differently from the normal school style schedule to fit your family?

 

 

[Mandy in TN]

My dh rarely gets home before 7:30. Doodle has orchestra practice until 7:30 one week night and volleyball practice until 8 on another. Consequently, we don't usually eat dinner until after 8. Our whole day is shifted to accommodate our evenings. It is common for us to all be up at midnight. If Doodle were on a regular school schedule I don't know when he would eat, he would only see his dad on Sunday (the only day dh has off), and there is no way he would be getting enough sleep.

 

This year I divided Doodle's work into 80 days a semester instead of 90 (same amount of work, but 10 less days), so that I was able to schedule 10 field trip days instead of trying to catch up on a Saturday when we went on a field trip.

 

If Doodle doesn't wake up on his on, I will wake him around 10, and we spent the first hour and half or so of school either in my bed or on the couch snuggled up doing reading, oral narration, and memory work.

 

This year and last year we went on vacation after the ps here started school. The schools here don't get the whole week off for Thanksgiving, but we do. :D I also don't schedule school on Doodle's birthday. I decide when we want to stop for winter break. Then, I count back 90 weekdays skipping any days that I plan to take off. That's our official start date for the new year.

 

We don't loose skills over the summer, because we continue reading, writing, and arithmetic. The cool thing is that Doodle doesn't know any different. It helps us keep a schedule, takes very little time, and we get to do interest led unit studies that he chooses.

 

One year we schooled on Sat. On Mon Doodle went to a non-academic tutorial and played. (Honestly, that was rough for me. I worked half days on Sat and then came home and did school. I felt like I never had a minute to breath.)

 

HTH-

Mandy

[trulycrabby]

Evencrabbier9 works best in short sessions, so we rarely do schoolwork more than an hour or 1.5 hours at a time. So, we do a morning session, an afternoon session, and often evening and weekend sessions. We also school year-round, so that helps too. So far, this schedule has worked very well, and as he matures we are lengthening the sessions and hopefully will have a more normal schoolday.

[texasmama]

I just switched from two days a week out of home work to one day a week out of home work with the other hours done at home so our situation is "weird" and "different".  That will be combined with the upcoming basketball season for my boys (with practices and games 3-4 nights a week - practices from 4:30-6 pm a 30 minute drive away).  We attend a half day co-op on Fridays, and littlest dd has piano lessons at 12:30 every Monday.  The boys and dh do a half day every other Saturday of volunteer work at our church food outreach ministry.  So we shove school into the places it fits and also school some in the summer.

 

I read a loud some during the evenings/weekends to keep on track.  We start our days with reading history and then move to doing math with the boys.  We double up on some subjects each day.  The kids work on co-op homework while I am at work.  They do what they can in other subjects independently, though they don't like to be independent much.

 

Would say more but I have to clean the dog's ears!!!  (Yes, true story.)  :)

[Mom2TheTeam]

We don't do anything super odd.  I have 6 kids 7 and under including twin 5 year olds, twin 3 year olds and a running (literally) 11 month old.  So, our school work often gets derailed and not fully completed.  To compensate for that, we often school on Saturday.  My husband works 6 days a week most weeks anyway.  So, it works out well for us. 

 

We also don't do a lot of school in the morning.  Mornings are rough because of my twin 3 year olds.  We often don't start anything till at least 10:30, frequently it's 11.  We do most of our work in the afternoon while they are sleeping.  So, our school day is more like 10:30/11 - 12:30, break for lunch, 1:30 - 3:30 or even later.  It's easier to do when all 3 of the littles are napping...or at least the 3 year olds!

[Mandylubug]

DH works a late shift. He leaves for work currently at 12:20pm and arrives home at midnight. His off days are typically off during the week as well. We take one day off midweek, and the other day we complete math, reading and whatever hands on project, field trip or other activity that would go with our lessons with DH participating with us. We want to spend quality time with him, so each morning, we wake up and leisurely enjoy our coffee and breakfast. DH and I run 3 times a week in the mornings. Once a week we go to a park to run and kids to play. We just consider the mornings till lunch time our family time just like many consider their evenings after dinner family time. If we didn't do it this way, we would never spend quality time with DH. We also typically school on Saturdays. A minimum of Math and Reading is completed each Saturday since we take one full day off during the week.

 

We have lunch at 12 and start our studies at 12:30. We typically are finished by 6pm and eat dinner then.

[Donna]

Our schedule works around dd who is passionate about music. She gets up in the morning around 8am and we alternate violin practice and school until about 3pm on Mon. and Tues.

 

I work Weds and Thurs. so I plan out her schoolwork and she practices and completed most subjects during the day then when I get home from work we do her math. Her daddy is home with her while I work but since he doesn't do school with her everyday and hasn't done Algebra since he was in 9th grade (over 20 years ago), they feel more comfortable having me help her with math.

 

Fridays are a busy day for us. In the morning we catch up on anything we might have missed during the week or schedule doctor appointments or field trips or just take it easy if we've had a busy week. Afternoons are taken up with violin lessons (often a practice with a recent grad and a lesson) and orchestra in the evenings. 

 

We school a longer school year than the local public schools. We generally go from late August through the end of June.

We sometimes also get some schoolwork done on weekends...those rare weekends we might be home or during long drives. 

 

-I forgot to add that we do a lot of "car" schooling.

[Jean in Newcastle]

We school year around.

 

This year we're going to have Wednesday afternoon's be "project time" - when the kids work on open-ended projects of their own choosing (Project based  homeschooling).  

 

Wed. mornings are done at the library.  

[madteaparty]

I only HS 3,5 days a week. DH homeschools one day, but his day looks completely different than mine. We both work, I part-time.

[Alice]

Dh and I each work part-time and stay home part-time. Our week looks something like this...

 

Monday: Morning school with me, fairly solid 3-4 hours. Monday afternoon dh is home and I’m at work. In the past they have maybe had to practice piano but otherwise it was free. This year, my 5th grader is having to do more work on Monday afternoons just to get it all done. But what he does is dependent on what the rest of the week looks like and what he did in the morning. 

 

Tuesdays: Full day of school, often really 9-5pm with breaks of course but it’s not unusual that we might still be doing some thing late in the afternoon or evening. 

 

Wednesday: Dh is home in the morning he does school with the kids. Often it’s a bit lighter because he does art with them most weeks. Afternoon is piano, sometimes we might do some history or reading aloud or science when we get home from that. 

 

Thursdays: Co-op which is semi-academic. It’s not really our main classes but neither is it purely fun. The second grader takes PE, Choir, Art, Drama, Geography, Science (different classes different semesters). The 5th grader is taking a Sherlock Holmes class, a Lego Mechanics class and Acting. After co-op we do Odyssey of the Mind. The rest of the day is usually spent with friends. 

 

Fridays: Full day of school, could be 9-5, depending on what is left from the week. 

 

At the beginning of the week we have a meeting and discuss what the week looks like. We also do a lot of outside activities so we talk about that and any other unusual things happening. They both have notebooks where I write the assignments. The fifth grader knows he can work from his notebook independently whenever he wants. Theoretically if he gets everything done on Tuesday he’s done for the week with assigned work, but that never happens. :) 

[Ellie]

Although I'm not sure there's a "normal," mine was decidedly different from most people who frequent the WTM forum. :D

 

Monday and Tuesday were Official School Days. Anything that looked like Official School Stuff was put on the kitchen table. The children could do it or not...but we didn't leave the house on Monday and Tuesday. No field trips, no errands, no doctor's appointments, no crafts/sewing for me, no major housecleaning...just...stay home. And it turns out that if nothing is going on, out of boredom children will often turn to their Official School Stuff. :D (There might have been a dance class, but it would have been in the late afternoon, since it was scheduled around school children.)

 

Wednesday: Library. We went every single Wednesday, usually to a larger one in a nearby city. We hung out there until we were finished, and then we came home. Once in awhile we visited with friends after lunch, but mostly we just came home (we had church on Wednesday evenings).

 

Thursday: Field trip. We left the house every Thursday without fail. Sometimes we might have worked on a Camp Fire badge, or maybe something we'd read about in the newspaper. In the fall we might go up to the mountains to pick apples. We went to the zoo, to the tidepools, to the aquarium, to the beach. Sometimes we just went to the mall, one that was further away, and had an Orange Julius. :-) We only did field trips with our support group if they were on a Thursday.

 

Friday: Clean house, monthly park day. All the laundry, dust all the furniture, move the furniture and vacuum, clean the bathroom.

 

Weekends: free from major cleaning, time for goofing off with Mr. Ellie or going to Highland games or children's sports or whatever.

 

Monday: Ease into the week, not having to worry about laundry or major housework. Just get up in the morning and...stay home.

 

We did this for five or six years. :-)

[CrunchyGirl]

I own my own company and it's demanding at times (more often than not actually). DH and I currently switch off caring for the kids and working. I do the core subjects with the two older kids in the morning while DH works. Then the girls go down for a nap, I go to my office, and he works on school work with LegoMan. Then late in the afternoon right before dinner I will read content subjects to them. In theory we school 7 days a week year round. Partially because it allows us the flexibility to miss days here and there and partially because LegoMan does better with the consistency. We do take time off. For example, we generally travel 2-3 times a year for work and those trips last around 3 weeks each. We homeschool on the road but generally just core subjects. I'm honestly worried about how this will work long term.

[Woodland Mist Academy]

We did this for five or six years. :-)

 

Then what did you do? I have always wondered if you did this schedule until your girls were 18. ;)

[MerryAtHope]

Fridays are friend-days here, so we're off every Friday afternoon. Because we have so many half-days, we generally school from mid-July to the end of May, with about 6 weeks off for the summer. 

 

Otherwise our weeks are pretty standard, but we all look forward to getting away on Friday afternoons!

 

Merry :-)

[Ellie]

Then what did you do? I have always wondered if you did this schedule until your girls were 18. ;)

 

One year we started out doing every day just like school. We burned out by Thanksgiving, then put the books away until the following fall. We did KONOS; older dd began taking classes at the community college in January (she was 14yo), so younger dd and I finished the year with KONOS (Monday and Thursday, English and math; Tuesday and Thursday, KONOS; Friday, clean house and monthly park day). We did KONOS for two years. The year younger dd was 13, I started a little one-room, multi-grade school at my church, and she went with me as a freshman (she should have been an 8th grader, but we had skipped her a year when she was 11 or 12. Long story, lol.) She started the second year of the school with me, as well, but then she also started taking classes at the community college.

 

I graduated both dds when they were 16yo, because both by then were full time at the community college. :-)

[Korrale]

My husband works late shift and he works 6 days a week. So we do the more formal aspects of schooling during those evenings when he works. The toughest stuff is usually done from 8pm-10pm. When he has vacation we have vacation. Or our son might choose to show daddy his new skills. On daddy's day off we might have more of a field trip day.

Our philosophy is that learning is life and it isn't limited to certain hours.

Our exceptions for daddy's off no school rule is that he has to do some math and reading every day. And he chooses to. Even when he was sick recently and I said he didn't have to, he found comfort in snuggling up and reading to us or doing some mental math.

[RoundAbout]

We are traveling this year so our homeschool is decidedly different. For instance we just finished up a month of touring National Parks so DS's curriculum was very science heavy as we attended nightly Ranger talks in Yellowstone, cave tours in South Dakota, and nature study through hiking and biking. DS completed several junior ranger patches which involve a lot of science and writing as well. Every morning I fit in some math and every night I require about 30 minutes of reading. Handwriting practice as well when it's convenient.

 

When we are settled for a period of time, like right now at Nana's place for a week, then we hit school HARD. I double up on math, which is easy to do with RightStart games, pull out ETC workbooks, and have DS work on his history notebook (we are doing SOTW 1 and his notebook is a combo of copywork, original sentences, and drawings). I also have him explain some of the science concepts he learned (like how caves form, the difference between geysers and hot springs, etc.) to people we are visiting in order to review and get practice explaining something coherently. I try to do this in a non-contrived way like "Hey, can you tell Nana about Wind Cave, she's never been there."

 

In a few weeks we will be hitting some big museums and we will probably drop back to just math and reading, with lots of natural discussion about what we are seeing. As a student, and now as a frequent visitor to museums, zoos, and aquariums, its a major pet peeve of mine to see school groups busy filling out worksheets on field trips instead of actually looking at and absorbing the amazing things around them. Instead I will take pictures of anything notable for later discussion and review.

[mom31257]

Dh is a school teacher, so we do follow a school year calendar.  Our weekly schedule varies greatly, though. This makes every day look a little different.  Dd takes a Spanish class out weekly and volunteers at the library weekly. We got to a co-op that meets every other week. I teach a Chemistry class at my house which is every other week. I lead a monthly book club. That doesn't include any nightly obligations such as church or dd's performing theater interest.

 

First:

I make a weekly plan of the whole year. I use a spreadsheet to list chapter numbers, lesson numbers, units, etc., which have to be completed each week in order to finish by the end of the year.

 

Each Weekend:

I use those plans to make a list of what has to be done each week. I then look at our schedule for that week, taking into account our outside classes, any field trips, doctor appointments, etc.

 

If it is an especially busy week, I look at our lessons to see if there are any non-essentials that I can cross off the list. I tend to over plan, so I don't feel guilty to do it. I feel the outside activities, such as classes and book club, are just as important as our book work at home. Then I schedule out the week for ds, putting more work on the days we are home and less on the days we have something out.  I give dd a list of what has to be done for the week as well as our "out of the house" schedule, and she does her own planning.

 

Daily:

I look at our day and see which things need to be done by which part of the day. I let dd know my schedule with ds, so that she can get with me for the subjects that involve me. She takes Spanish out and is doing BJU American history through DVD, so I'm less involved there.

 

I hope this makes sense! I try to go with the flow and not stress over an ever-changing schedule. In fact, I think I've come to like it that way. Every day being the same schedule would get boring after awhile!

 

 

 

[Farrar]

Schedule? We're supposed to have a schedule? ;)

 

We do Mondays off usually because that's co-op. We school most other days, including the traditional weekend. We go year round and take our longest break in September, so we just started back to school this week. We have a loose routine for certain school things on certain days, like dictation on Tuesdays (listening to them scratch it out now) and math games on Wednesdays, but we're not married to it. We don't have a daily set allotment of time for subjects or a set order.

[albeto.]

We unschool here. No academic expectations. No schedules. No assignments, no units, no... anything that looks like school. 

 

One child decided to go to the local charter school (science and tech) and so caught herself up with math (the one subject she felt she needed it), and she's thriving and having a great time.

 

The other kids determine their own goals, identify obstacles, and problem solve. In the course of playing, they learned the things that will support their play. Now that they're teens, play looks differently than it did during the elementary school years. They don't play in forts, but create computer programs. Math is necessary to this end, and so is learned as a support rather than as a requirement. Science is an interest of one teen, and in his countless hours of uninterrupted exploration on the subject, learned biology, cellular biology, chemistry (because it explains cellular biology), calculus (because you can't understand the chemistry books without knowing what the equations are), and other things that came along for the ride. The youngest still has a broad range of interests and his play is quite eclectic, including computer programing, exploring all things Japanese, and magic card tricks. 

[momto2Cs]

I work mornings outside the home, so we're afternoon scholars. We also do some work on Sundays so that we have Fridays free for meeting with friends.

 

[Ravin]

DD is in an enrichment program on Tu-Th that includes PE, Spanish, sign language, science courses, choir, and band. We do homeschool on Su-M-W-F. Sunday is focused on hands-on projects and learning games, with extra-long blocks of time for Literature and Geography activities only done that day.

On M-W-F, DD has a loop of independent work to do in the mornings (with Dad home) while I'm in class. This includes spelling (except tests), typing, reading comprehension practice on computer, independent reading, Latin vocab/chant practice, music (reading music), art (tied to writing), penmanship, math (mostly review), map drawing for geography, and reading for literature. We have a separate loop of work to do together including math (new advancement), grammar, spelling tests, and Latin.