Realistic and Simple Homeschool Schedule for 2021
Have you tried and tried and tried to create a realistic and simple homeschool schedule that doesn’t actually make you feel like a huge failure by the end of the day? Have you ever written everything down in your beautiful planner only to quickly find out that you need to ball up the paper after trying it for a little bit because it just doesn’t work? Have you felt frustrated and stressed because you can never keep to your schedule because it’s just too much to do in so little time?
If you have ever felt this way, you are not alone. We’re parents and we already have a bunch of parent stuff to do outside of schoolwork with our kids. So how in the world do we tie in our kid’s school work to all of the gazillion other things we have to do? How do we manage it all? Hiring a nanny just may not be in the budget, but our kids are so demanding and needy and we just can’t DO IT ALL!
We can’t help child A with their math assignment because child B is throwing a tantrum because child C broke child B’s block tower. (Just writing this has me feeling so frustrated because I know how this feels. I’ve been there time and time again.)
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Now before I get all worked up, I want you to first take a deep breath… a real… long… deep breath while closing your eyes. And I want you to forget about how challenging it has been for you. I want you to put every negative feeling and emotion behind you, and I want you to begin to think about how you have the power to change your circumstances – one small decision and change at a time.
I don’t want you to think about all the things you’ve got to get done on your to-do list today or tomorrow. I don’t want you to think about all the things your kids or spouse did to upset you today or yesterday.
Right now, let’s just focus on YOU – your balance, your stability, your sanity, your peace, your healing. I want you to think about the things in your current schedule that prick you, annoy you, or make you unhappy each day. These are the things that you must begin with. This is where you start.
While I may not have all of the answers to meet your every need (only Jesus does), I do want to show you how I have been where you are. I have searched and searched for the perfect schedule that works for my homeschool day to have only found one specific resource that really helped me figure things out and be able to stick with it without feeling like I was going crazy trying to juggle my Mom-Wife-Teacher-Life™.
Here’s the secret sauce I used to build my realistic and simple homeschool schedule…
Two words: BLOCK SCHEDULE.
I wasted so much of my time trying to piece my day by the hour or half-hour. And I kept running into the same issue of going overtime or not having enough time or not being consistent in doing certain activities at the same time. It was treacherous and flat out frustrating and ludicrous. There was no way I was going to be productive or help my kids be productive with my inconsistent and failing scheduling systems… until Jordan Page posted her viral block schedule system video on YouTube.
This was a GAME CHANGER. As simple as it was, I still got my pen and paper and watched the video more than once. This was what I needed. FINALLY, a system that could be personalized to my life. And it was so simple to set up. Not only was it simple… it was REALISTIC for a busy and tired mama. It was something I could implement every day without feeling like I was a failure and unable to accomplish anything. And I’m STILL going strong (months later)!
Pretty much the way it works is organizing your day into “blocks” instead of hour by hour. Instead of trying to complete a specific activity within a certain timeframe that you may exceed, you focus on completing a set of like tasks within a 1-3 hour block.
So now, let me show you the schedule I implemented with the help of this block system that actually changed my life and helped me go from “super-stressed” mama to… well… “not-as-stressed” mama because let’s be honest here, there’s always a little bit of stress to deal with. 🤷🏽♀️
A Realistic and Simple Homeschool Schedule
Morning Block | 7:00-9:00 AM | 2-hours
- Get kids up and they do their morning chores (fold blankets, make their bed, brush their teeth, etc)
- Start a load of laundry
- Go to homeschool room, open blinds, and turn on my computer
- Go downstairs to cook, serve, and eat breakfast
- Kids practice piano for 10 minutes each and have free play for about 30 minutes
- I return to my desk in the homeschool room to write out my goals for the day while they play
- I also take this time to prepare my work tasks
>> Homeschool Block | 9:00 AM-12:00 PM | 3-hours <<
- Prayer and Bible pledge (5 min)
- Bible lesson and growth mindset work (20 min)
- Family story read-aloud time (15 min)
- Memory Work Review (15-20 min)
- Daily Spelling (10-15 min)
- Monday-Reading/Phonics, Tuesday-Grammar, Wednesday-Vocabulary, Thursday-Writing (15-20 min)
- Snack Break (15 min)
- Math Mammoth (20-30 minutes)
- Monday-Spanish, Tuesday-Social Studies/History/Geography, Wednesday-Spanish, Thursday-Art/Piano, Friday-Science and Spanish (20 minutes)
Prayer/Rest/Quiet Time Block | 12:00-1:00 PM | 1-hour
- afternoon prayer
- nap or quiet time
Work Block | 1:00-4:30 PM | 3.5-hours
- fix and eat a quick lunch
- teach online classes and work on curriculum
- blog work
- kids work on independent project work
- educational screen time
- finish laundry
Evening Block | 4:30-8:00 PM | 3.5-hours
- 30-min outdoor play
- cook and eat dinner
- speed clean
- last-minute work tasks
- kids take baths
Back in the day, I thought my children needed to do all subjects every day. WRONG! So very wrong. For one, we never even had enough time to do everything. And two, by the end of the day, I had no hair on my head because I pulled it all out.
So to make it easier, every day we complete our group work first, which is what you see at the beginning of the schedule from Prayer to Daily Spelling. Then, we focus on one ELA subject each day of the week instead of trying to focus on so many skills each day. I love this because we can really take our time with grammar skills or specific comprehension skills. (But don’t worry, every day we are applying phonics, writing, and comprehension skills.)
And then, math is every day… of course. But we only focus on fluency work and 2 pages from our Math Mammoth curriculum book. Taking small bites instead of large bites every day really helped my kids digest their lessons better.
We complete “special” subjects like science and history on one day of the week because that’s really all we have time for, but it also makes sense. Focusing on each special subject just once a week actually helps me to plan really cool projects for whatever lesson we are learning about and it also causes my kids to look forward to that specific day of the week!
And finally, we complete a 10-15 minute Spanish lesson 3 times a week because our Spanish curriculum is set up that way. It’s super easy to implement. It’s practical, not a lot of planning on my end, and it’s fun for my kids to do together.
Final Thoughts…
And there you have it! In case you’re wondering why I called this my “homeschool” schedule when it’s more than just homeschool tasks, it’s because my entire schedule revolves around homeschooling. My daily schedule is built around our homeschool day because it makes me accountable to getting it done!
Some people prefer to homeschool in the afternoons, but I prefer to homeschool in the mornings because that’s when we are all fresh and ready to tackle our day.
After you have written down those things in your schedule that just aren’t working, sit back and try to organize your day in blocks. I promise you that doing it this way is so much more practical and attainable.
If you haven’t already, go check out Jordan’s block schedule system and be inspired to create your own. Whenever your homeschool block is, you can take a look at how I have organized our homeschool block to give you some ideas to organize yours. I have to say that this new schedule has allowed me to feel more accomplished by the end of the day, and it has allowed my kids to enjoy school time more. BIG plus!
Feel free to comment down below if you have any questions, concerns, or ideas you would like to add. We’re in this together so let’s support each other with positivity.
I’m praying for your strength.
xo, Tessa