Jace & Spencer with their German teacher, Brother BreckenridgeOur homeschool schedule seems to always be changing. I know that I love to hear about how other people balance their home duties and their homeschool responsibilities, and I also have a lot of friends who ask me about our daily schedule. So, I'm going to share our current schedule. I know that when I am consistent about the routines of our day, everything seems to go smoother.
"The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; on the other hand, she who lets habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction." This is because if we "fail to ease life by laying down habits of right thinking and right doing, habits of wrong thinking and wrong doing [cement] themselves [in place] of their own accord." --Charlotte Mason (one of my favorite home school "experts")
6:10am - Family Scripture Study & Prayer
Bob wakes me up, and calls all the children to come in for family scripture study. The kids always race bleary-eyed into our room, trying to see if the boys or girls can all be in our room the quickest. We read from the Book of Mormon, and have a family prayer before Bob leaves at 6:30 for seminary & school.
6:30 - Morning Chores
Everyone does the following: dressed (shower), hair & teeth, scriptures & prayer, make bed, tidy bedroom, trash/hamper/hangers, help "buddy" with chores, and tidy upstairs zone or do upstairs job.
7:15 - Breakfast & daily meal prep.
I just started taking about an hour in the morning to prepare all the meals for the day. I'm not totally consistent with this yet, but whenever I do this I am so glad I did! First I make breakfast & we eat, then we all work together to chop veggies, make salads, start things in the crock pot or rice in the rice cooker, start beans soaking, rinse sprouts, start a new batch of kefir and yogurt, etc. This makes a huge difference in our day! I'm sure it saves us a lot of money as well. One of these days I'll post our menu plan on here. I've worked long and hard at it, and is great whenever I am diligent about following it!
8:30 - Clean up crew
We all go through each room of the house, making sure they are all tidy, trash emptied, etc. We vacuum one floor of the home while we do this. We also deep clean one bathroom, and (if we have time), fold & put away the laundry for the day.
9:30 - Devotional
We have our daily devotional, storied scriptures, & weekly topics (letter & number of the week, Greek/Latin root words, grammar rule, etc.)
10:00 - History
We have our history lesson & eat a morning snack. This is usually a bowl of soup.
10:30 - Science
We all learn about science together - right now we are studying Biology.
11:00 - Lessons
Rotation 1: A - piano practice, J - Math, C & S - English
Rotation 2: A-Math, J-English, C-Piano, S-Math
Rotation 3: A - English, J-Piano, C-Math, S-Finish school checklist
(This sounds like it goes flawlessly and automatically, but in reality it is sort of pleasant chaos with everyone trying to complete their school checklists. We have the planned rotations so that everyone gets a turn on the computer for math, and the piano to practice)
Most of the kids' school checklists are:
1. Gospel study & journal
2. Math
3. English (LA assignments, handwriting, spelling, workbooks)
4. Reader
5. Piano practice
6. Foreign Language (We use Rosetta Stone)
7. History (w/reading assignment)
8. Science (w/reading assignment)
12:45 - Clean up from school & get lunch on.
1:00 - Lunch
This is usually a big salad, then we have a quick clean up, and I send everyone off to quiet time. During quiet time they can read or play quietly on their beds, and finish any book work they didn't finish during school. They actually look forward to quiet time each day.
2:30 - Afternoon snack time
We make sure the house is tidy, have an afternoon snack, then we all go outside for our daily walk & playing time. We're sure looking forward to spring!
Free time, including time to work in our current zone - organizing, deep cleaning, and decorating.
5:00 - Make dinner, eat together, and do our after-meal jobs. (We try to eat by 5:30 each day so we're done and cleaned up before mutual or other evening activities)
Family time, baths & pjs for C, M, Z, A & a. Pj's for everyone else that usually showers in the morning.
7:00 - Bedtime snack - usually fruit, sometimes with nuts or yogurt. Then we have "toothbrush time" where Mom gives our teeth a good cleaning.
7:30 - "Scripture, song, & prayer". This has been the ending to our day for over 10 years now. Then all the kids head to bed.
So, that is the plan, of course it is subject to change. It has to be flexible to allow us to do cub scouts, activity days, YM/YW activities, visiting & home teaching, gymnastics, science class etc, etc.
This schedule gives us a goal, and then we often have to change things around. Today we only had time to read a short bit of history, and the beginning of a chapter in science, but at least we did a little bit because we had our plan.
I'd LOVE to hear about your schedules/routines as well! Please share!
