When you are planning your homeschool day the age of your child or children will dictate how your day is planned. One obvious example is that the younger the child the shorter the formal seat-work part of the day.
With children up to the age of about ten, you will make many of the decisions on how your child will spend his day. You will work out his timetable, based on his interests and needs, and you will put it into action. If you don’t drive it, it won’t happen. It really is up to you.
Make a timetable for a month, rather than for a whole year. This way, you will soon know what part of the week isn’t working so well and you’ll be able to make adjustments.
When you make your weekly plan:
- First of all put in what I call ‘the inflexibles’. That’s things like weekly lessons outside of the home and special commitments that you will always be doing.
- Then add your family’s daily routine, allowing for things like laundry, meal preparation, tidying and break times.
- Thirdly, add a time for reading and writing activities and a time for mathematics activities.
- Fourthly, add just two or three other subjects that you want to include.
- Make sure you allow ‘breathing space’. That is, time in between activities to move from one thing to another, for the children to have a quick run round the yard, play on the trampoline or swing.
You will probably be able to fit in a lot less than you hoped for, but it’s better to have a realistic timetable or schedule that you can accomplish than a wonderful goal that’s too hard to achieve.
Here’s another tip – if you have a lot of subjects that you like to cover but can’t fit into the timetable, consider giving these subjects a month or a half-year each. So one season might be lots of science experiments and the next season might be lots of art and craft.
If you want more detailed, guided weekly help in your homeschooling, you will enjoy one of my online courses:
www.SuccessfulHomeschoolingMadeEasy.com
www.CharlotteMasonMadeEasy.com
www.GrammarLessonsMadeEasy.com